GODS MISSIONARY PLAN 
FOR THE WORLD 



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Class JSL&OkO 

Book. ^BLa3 

Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



God's Missionary Plan 
for the World 



BY 

BISHOP J. W. BASHFORD 




NiwYobk: EATON & MAINS 
Cincinnati; JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



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LJ32ARY of CONGRESS 
Two Oooie* Received 

MAP 4 «90f 

^.CopyrttrW Entry — , 
CLASS ' A XX&. N*. 

9 'C§Y D. 



Copyright, 1907, by 
Eaton & Mains 



TO MY WIFE 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface vii 

I The Divine Purpose i 

II The Divine Order of Procedure 21 

III The Old Testament and Missions 43 

IV The New Testament and Missions 58 

V The Divine Method of Securing Power 71 

VI The Divine Method of Securing Workers 90 

VII The Divine Method of Securing Means 112 

VIII The Divine Method of Securing Results 133 

IX The Divine Providence and Missions 155 



PREFACE 

In Chungking, China, in January, 1905, I 
found a very suggestive volume by Rev. R. F. 
Horton, entitled The Bible a Missionary Book. 
It was the only volume in West China and had 
just arrived. Hence I could not accept the loan 
of it so kindly offered, and I had only a little 
time to read it while busy with other cares. But 
the argument and the title of the book took pos- 
session of me ; and during the succeeding months 
of travel and meditation, I read the Bible through 
from the missionary view-point ; and the present 
volume took shape. 

If the volume does not speak for itself no 
further words can now avail. I need only add 
that I am indebted to Dr. H. K. Carroll, Secre- 
tary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, for valuable sug- 
gestions and also for the title of the volume, 
which is a more ambitious one than I had se- 
lected ; to Rev. Stephen V. R. Ford for valuable 
statistics; and to Dr. F. D. Gamewell, Mr. 
Charles H. Fahs, Mr. Morris W. Ehnes, and 
Mr. G. F. Sutherland for exceedingly valuable 
information ; and to Rev. C. H. Morgan, Ph. D., 
for preparing the running titles and the index. 

It seems absurd indeed to attempt an inter- 



Preface 

pretation of the Bible and an expression of the 
divine plan for the race in a small volume pre- 
pared under tremendous pressure of other duties, 
and even more absurd to hint at a philosophy of 
history in a brief closing chapter. But it is large 
movements which are simple and easily foreseen ; 
while details introduce complexity and confusion. 
It is impossible to forecast the death of any single 
individual, but quite easy to calculate the life of 
a generation. It is impossible to foretell where 
gravity and the wind will leave any single leaf 
of the forest ten minutes after it loses its hold 
upon the branch, but quite easy to foretell the 
exact spot in the universe which one globe will 
occupy a thousand years from today. 

I have dared to sow, the harvest will test the 
seed, and also the soil. Let us pray God that 
the seed prove sound, the soil good, and the 
harvest a hundredfold. 



Tiii 



CHAPTER I 
The Divine Purpose 

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing 
in the heavenly places in Christ : even as he chose us in 
him before the foundation of the world, that we should 
be holy and without blemish before him in love : . . . 
making known unto us the mystery of his will, according 
to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a 
dispensation of the fullness of the times, to sum up all 
things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the 
things upon the earth." Eph. I. 3-1 1. 

The divine purpose contemplates the evangel- 
ization of all peoples in pagan lands and the 
complete Christianization of the races. Draw 
the line clearly for a few moments between 
evangelization and Christianization. As soon as 
every man, woman, and child on earth hears the 
Gospel, learns the good news, "For God so loved 
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth on him should not 
perish, but have eternal life," the human race 
has been evangelized. When every human being 
accepts Christ as Saviour and Lord, and when 
the inner spirit and the outward conduct of each 
are transformed by Christ, then the Christian- 

I 



Our Two 
Tasks 



2 God's Missionary Plan 

ization of the race will be accomplished. We 
confine our attention first to the lighter task of 
the evangelization of the race. 
China a We should like to consider the problems which 

confront us in each unevangelized land. In 
order to speak from personal knowledge and 
with greater definiteness we shall draw our 
illustrations largely from China. Other nations 
probably would afford equally strong illustra- 
tions, were we familiar with them. Besides, 
the same fundamental difficulties meet us in all 
parts of the field, and in studying the problem 
in one field we are studying it in its essential 
features in all the unevangelized portions of the 
earth. 
Population of The best estimates put the unevangelized peo- 
the Empire ^ s Q £ ^ WO rld at between eight and nine hun- 
dred millions. For the sake of clearness let us 
compare the problem which confronts us in the 
evangelization of one single empire with the 
problem which confronted the church in the 
evangelization of Europe and the United States. 
The best estimates make the population of the 
Chinese empire four hundred and twenty-nine 
millions, and the population of Europe and Amer- 
ica combined four hundred and sixty-two mil- 
lions. This comparison of the population of 
China with that of Europe and America reveals 
in some measure the size of the task w r e have 



The Divine Purpose 



undertaken in that empire alone. Contemplate 
briefly the efforts which have been required to 
secure the evangelization and the partial Chris- 
tianization of Europe and America. 

i. Think of the number of men and women 
who have devoted their lives to the spread of the 
Gospel in Europe and the United States. There 
are 154,320 ministers of the Gospel in the United 
States today for a population of 85,568,159. In 
a word, there is one minister of the Gospel in 
the United States for every 554 of the popula- 
tion. There are in China in all the churches, sub- 
stantially two thousand persons, including some 
women, engaged in the work of evangelization. 
This does not include the missionary physicians, 
or teachers, but it does include ordained Chinese 
preachers. This gives us one minister of the 
Gospel in China, including all ordained Chinese, 
for each 219,000 of the population. This perhaps 
is the fairest basis of comparison. In a word, we 
have three hundred and seventy-seven times as 
many ministers of the Gospel in the United States 
in proportion to the population as we have in the 
Chinese empire. 

Including all active Christian workers in 
China, men and women, native and foreign, we 
have in the empire one minister, physician, 
teacher, or Bible woman for each 44,693 of 
the population; while in the United States we 



Inadequate 

Gospel 

Agencies 



United States 
in Comparison 



4 God's Missionary Plan 

have a minister, teacher, or physician for each 
no of the population. In a word, we have four 
hundred and six times as many ministers, teach- 
ers, and physicians laboring for the transforma- 
tion of the United States as we have in China, 
including native workers. 

proportion of Omitting the native workers and not count- 
Missionaries .1 • r .-, ... 1 1 

ing the wives of the ministers, teachers, and 
physicians, who are not counted in the United 
States, but including among the missionaries not 
only the ministers proper, but all men and women 
who have gone to China as missionary teachers 
and physicians, we have in the Chinese empire 
one missionary for every 156,428 persons as com- 
pared with one preacher, teacher, or physician 
for every no of the population in the United 
States, or fourteen hundred times as many in 
proportion to the population as in China. But 
putting the comparison in any one of the three 
forms we have in the United States from three 
hundred and seventy-seven to fourteen hundred 
times as many people laboring for Christ in pro- 
portion to the population as we have in the 
Chinese empire. The longer one dwells upon 
these facts, the more fully will he realize how 
pitiful are the resources, how few the agents 
placed at God's disposal for the evangelization of 
the heathen world as compared with the re- 
sources and agents employed in Christian lands. 



The Divine Purpose 



Periods of 
Evangeliza- 
tion 



With so few workers how and when can the 
church at home reasonably expect the evangeliza- 
tion of the human race? 

2. In the element of time, it has taken nineteen 
hundred years for the Gospel to spread through 
Christendom. Counting twenty years as the period 
of service of Christian workers, the evangeliza- 
tion of Europe and the United States has re- 
quired ninety-five generations of workers. Think 
of the number of men and women whose lifelong 
labors have been required during the last ninety- 
five generations to lead Europe and the United 
States with their 462,000,000 people to that state 
of Christian life which thus far they have at- 
tained. If we are to demand any similar period 
of time and any similar number of workers for 
the evangelization and the partial Christianization 
of the Chinese empire with almost equal popula- 
tion, a very large and heavy problem confronts 
the Christian church. When we enlarge our 
undertaking from the evangelization of the 429,- 
000,000 Chinese to the enlightenment of the 
900,000,000 of India, Africa, China, and the 
islands of the sea, the task becomes an appalling 
one. 

3. Think of the money which is required even comparative 
to maintain the churches and to make the slight 
advances which we are able to make at home. 
It has been estimated that the members of 



Expenditures 



6 God's Missionary Plan 

the Methodist Episcopal Church alone give 
for all purposes some $40,000,000 a year — an 
average expenditure of over twelve dollars per 
member. If the same proportion is maintained 
by the other churches, the annual expenditure 
for all church and benevolent purposes is $4.25 
for each man, woman, and child in the United 
States. Using the same ratio for Europe, the 
total expenditure made by governments and by 
individuals for the maintenance of religious and 
charitable institutions of Christendom would be 
$1,963,500,000 per year. It is safe to count the 
total expenditure for Christianity including 
churches, schools, colleges, hospitals, charity, 
etc., at $1,500,000,000 a year. Upon the other 
Contributions j ian( j w hen we return to the evangelization 

for China ' . . - 

of China, the Methodist Episcopal Church 
through the Parent Board, the Woman's Board, 
and private donors gives $250,000 a year for 
that purpose. True, this church is not alone re- 
sponsible for the evangelization of China. But 
neither is this church alone responsible for the 
Christianization of the United States. From the 
statistics available we estimate the contributions 
of all the Protestant churches and Roman Catho- 
lic churches, combined, at approximately $2,000,- 
000 per year for China. In a word, the ex- 
penditure for the United States and Europe is 
seven hundred and fifty times as much as the 



The Divine Purpose 7 

expenditure for the evangelization of China with 
almost as large a population. 

Summing up the three factors which we have summing up 
thus far considered, we find that to evangelize 
the 462,000,000 of Europe and the United States 
and to maintain our Christian institutions in their 
present degree of efficiency, there were required 
1900 years of time, ninety-five generations of 
evangelists, with the lives of millions of ministers, 
teachers, and lay workers, and at present an 
expenditure of one and a half billion dollars a 
year. Human nature remains much the same the 
world over. The Chinese are much the same as 
Europeans or the Americans, only they are a little 
firmer in devotion to their existing civilization 
and to their existing customs than are Americans. 
Enlarging our task so as to include all the un- 
evangelized people on earth — more than double 
the number in China — surely the problem which 
confronts us is a discouraging one. 

Moreover, Europe at the time of her evan- Chinese 

,. -..--. , Solidarity 

gelization was divided into more than two score 
nations, and the very rivalries of these countries 
led part of them to accept Christianity out of 
strife and to pour out their lives and money for 
its spread. At the time of the Reformation, for 
instance, certain nations poured out their money 
and blood like water for the propagation of the 
Protestant faith, and others made equal sacrifices 



8 God's Missionary Plan 

for the propagation of the Roman Catholic faith, 
each of them making enormous sacrifices for the 
propagation of a branch of the church. So, 
"even through strife," as Paul wrote, the king- 
dom spread. But the Chinese are a compact 
people. They have one written language. They 
are dominated to a large extent by a single type 
of civilization. They constitute one great empire. 
Here, therefore, we attacked, not a divided people 
which could be conquered piecemeal and one part 
of which could be turned against the other part, 
as in Europe; we attacked a solid mass, pagan 
throughout. Looking at the problem from this 
point of view, the task was indeed an enormous 
one, 

In addition is the difficulty of mastering the 
Chinese language. When one learns the twenty- 
six characters which constitute the English al- 
phabet, so that he can recognize them at a 
glance, pronounce them at will, and write them 
readily, he can with the use of a dictionary read 
and write our language intelligently. A student 
twenty years old ought to master our alphabet 
in a day and be able to read and write in a few 
weeks. To learn Chinese, one must master a 
new character for every word which he acquires. 
Kang-hi's lexicon contains 44,449 Chinese char- 
acters. Fortunately less than a third of this 
number of characters appear in the current liter- 



Language a 

Barrier 



The Divine Purpose 9 

ature of the empire. Indeed I suppose one might 
claim to be a fair Chinese scholar who had mas- 
tered five thousand characters, although a native 
telegraph operator is required to master six thou- 
sand characters. These five thousand characters 
are exceedingly complex and exceedingly diffi- 
cult to differentiate. Our "m" resembles our 
"n"; "u" resembles "w" ; "o" resembles "q," etc. 
Think of the infinitely minute variations which 
must be made in order to differentiate not simply 
twenty-six characters, but five thousand charac- 
ters from each other. It requires a constant and 
almost an absorbing exercise of the memory to 
keep these characters differentiated in one's mind 
after they once have been mastered. Here, then, 
is an almost insuperable barrier to the conquest 
of Chinese civilization and to the winning of four 
hundred and twenty-nine millions. While no Difficulties of 
single language in India perhaps presents so great 
a barrier, our missionaries there are now preach- 
ing in thirty-seven different languages or dia- 
lects, and must master a hundred more in order 
to reach all her 300,000,000 people. In Africa 
we are obliged to create a written language out 
of an infinite variety of dialects for her 150,000,- 
000 people. Similar barriers to these found in 
China, India, and Africa confront us in every 
mission field on earth. 

Moreover, in attempting to overcome the most 



Other Fields 



io God's Missionary Plan 

Roman enduring pagan civilization ever produced we 
Abuses^ suffer in China, as in South America and Mexico, 
from the disadvantage of having Christianity 
misrepresented by the Jesuits. We must do the 
Roman Catholic Church the justice to say that 
John of Montecorvino translated the New Testa- 
ment and the Psalms into Chinese and that 
thousands upon thousands of Chinese have 
caught through Roman Catholic teaching enough 
of Christ to enable them to die for him in times 
of persecution. Upon the other hand, the 
Jesuits, as indeed all orders of the Roman Catho- 
lic Church, believe in the union of church and 
state, and from the first have mixed in the 
political affairs of eastern nations. So notorious 
was Jesuit interference with the political affairs 
of Japan that the Japanese, like many European 
Jesuit Efforts na tions, were compelled to banish them from the 
and china empire. In 1898 the Jesuits induced the French 
government to secure from China by pressure 
a treaty granting to all Roman Catholic mission- 
aries civil as well as ecclesiastical authority over 
their converts and conceding to foreign Catholic 
priests in the empire the rank of mandarins, or 
officials, and to the bishops the rank of viceroys. 
The Chinese government, in order to prevent 
too gross an abuse of civil power by the Catholic 
priests and also in order to treat all nations alike, 
offered the same privileges to Protestant mission- 



The Divine Purpose n 

aries. Through the good sense of these mission- 
aries and the wisdom of their governments, this 
offer was declined and the Chinese were in- 
formed that in the leading nations of the West 
church and state are entirely separated. The 
granting of civil power to the French priests 
in China has increased the abuses which had 
already sprung up, and the French Catholic 
priests are continually using this civil power for 
the acquisition of property, and are insisting upon 
the civil as well as the ecclesiastical control of 
their converts. But the great mass of the Chinese 
no more distinguish between Roman Catholic 
and Protestant Christians than people in America 
distinguish between a Cantonese and a Peking 
Chinese. Hence the Protestants are suffering 
and must suffer for years to come through the 
travesty of Christianity presented by the Roman 
Catholic officials. 

A further difficulty, in this case peculiar to English 
China, arises from the fact that even Protestant- ° pium War 
ism largely secured her entrance to the empire 
through the Opium War. That war and the 
continued introduction of opium into China 
through force by the English government are a 
blot upon the English flag. But it was the Opium 
War which opened to the missionaries the five 
leading ports of the empire, and gave us our 
foothold for the propagation of Christianity. 



12 God's Missionary Plan 

American Again, our work in China suffers humilia- 
Exciusion t j Qn |3 ecause Q f our American Exclusion Act. 

This act is a plain violation of a solemn treaty 
made by us with the Chinese. The act is so 
humiliating in its terms that we dare not im- 
pose it upon Japan or any nation possessing 
military strength and spirit. I do not believe it 
wise or fair to admit the Chinese coolies to free 
and unrestricted competition with American 
laborers while the standard of living for the 
Chinese remains so much below that of the 
Americans. At any rate, if there is any wisdom 
in protecting manufacturers in America from 
foreign competition by tariffs, the same principle 
demands the protection of the workingmen. For- 
tunately the Chinese government on economic 
grounds and the Chinese people on religious 
grounds are opposed to emigration. China is 
largely agreed with the United States on the end 
to be reached. But the terms of the present law 
which exclude the Chinese by name are humiliat- 
ing to Chinese self-respect, as similar terms 
would be humiliating to the pride of any other 
nation. If we would make the law mutual, for- 
bidding any Chinese to come to America and 
engage in manual labor and any American to go 
to China and engage in manual labor, I think it 
would be acceptable to the Chinese. Surely with 
substantial agreement by both nations as to the 



The Divine Purpose 13 

end to be reached, American lawyers can frame a 
bill which shall not be so offensive in its terms. 
Besides, the exclusion law was for years enforced 
in a harsh and cruel manner. Fortunately, Presi- 
dent Roosevelt has stopped this harsh enforce- 
ment of an offensive law. But the past harsh 
enforcement and the present terms of the law 
arouse the Chinese against Americans, and make 
Christian work in China more difficult and dan- 
gerous upon the part of all missionaries. More- 
over, although the Chinese government is making 
an heroic effort to abolish opium, we must now 
deal with a people probably a quarter of whom 
are demoralized by the drug. 

Once more, Protestant Christianity in China Taiping 
has suffered for more than a generation to some Rebellion 
extent from the odium of the Taiping Rebellion. Foreigners 
The rebellion was started by a young Chinese, 
who had had some slight contact with Chris- 
tianity through one of our Protestant schools. 
He claimed that during an illness he received a 
vision of Jesus Christ. He later went to one of 
our Protestant missionaries and spent a few 
weeks with him, professing to seek to fit himself 
for the ministry of the Gospel, but fortunately 
was refused baptism because he demanded a 
guarantee of monthly wages following his bap- 
tism. This young man, Hung Sui-tseuen, while 
he was not received into any Christian Church, 



14 God's Missionary Plan 

nevertheless conducted his agitation under the 
guise of a Christian, giving instruction in the 
New Testament and proposing to establish the 
Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace upon earth, 
so that the very name of the rebellion, the Tai- 
ping Rebellion, means the Great Peace Rebel- 
lion. Later he claimed to be a younger brother 
of Jesus Christ. Thus the name of Christ was 
used to sanction more horrible lust and plunder 
and butcheries in China than have disgraced the 
church in Europe. The rebellion spread through- 
out China and the loss of life by sword, famine, 
and pestilence during the thirteen years is 
estimated by the careful author of The Middle 
Kingdom at twenty million people. Finally, 
Christianity has suffered in China and in every 
other unevangelized land more than can ever be 
expressed, by the greed of some foreign traders, 
by the drunkenness of some foreign residents, by 
the injustice of some foreign governments in 
seizing territory, and by the lust of some visitors 
from Western nations finding shameful mani- 
festation in the absence of home restraints and in 
the presence of heathen peoples. 
Embarrass- j n i n( ii a w hile the embarrassments have 
India not been the same, perhaps they have been 

equally great. No one likes to be governed by 
others even though the despotism be benevolent. 
There is not the slightest doubt that English 



The Divine Purpose 



15 



African 



authority in India has tended to the decline of 
wars, famines, pestilences, and disorders among 
300,000,000 people, and has set the Indian in 
the path of modern civilization. Upon the other 
hand, we believe that the imposition of alien 
authority upon the people of India is now caus- 
ing much chafing upon the part of the young 
leaders; and, while aiding on the one side, is 
upon the other side a serious embarrassment to 
missions. 

In Africa missionary effort is still more handi- 
capped by the horrible cruelty which the United an lcaps 
States inflicted upon that continent in the Ameri- 
can slave trade, in the yet unforgotten cruelties 
of the earlier English slave trade, in the present 
barbarities of the rum traffic, and the atrocities 
of the Congo government. In a word, we are 
seriously handicapped in our efforts for the evan- 
gelization of the world by the imperfect Chris- 
tianity of the governments and the civilizations 
which Christians have thus far developed. 

When we recall the countless numbers of the Ron of 
Chinese, the solidarity of the heathen civiliza- an d Evils 
tion which prevails among them, the difficulties 
of their language, the misrepresentation of Chris- 
tianity by part of the missionaries in the exer- 
cise of civil authority, the disgrace of Protestant 
England in the Opium War, the embarrassment 
caused by the terms and enforcement of the 



i6 God's Missionary Plan 

American Exclusion Act, the travesty of Chris- 
tian civilization by the drunkenness and lust of 
some traders and travelers in the Orient, 
the greed and wickedness of foreign nations in 
seizing Chinese territory and exploiting China 
for commercial gain, the embarrassment of for- 
eign domination in India, the devilish greed of 
slavery and rum in Africa, the abuse of civil and 
religious authority in South America, we must 
surely recognize that the battle of the ages is 
on for the redemption of these vast empires. 
Satan is making his last stand in order to save 
these vast populations from contact with the 
living Christ. 
The cry of Possibly in what we have written above we 
imism ^^y seem to be contributing to the sentiment 
which many of the weaker members of our 
church already hold: possibly friends of mis- 
sions will regret that we are presenting so dark 
a picture of the task which confronts the church. 
Indeed, the great majority of those who are not 
interested in missions say that the task is simply 
appalling, that we have more than we can do 
to take care of heathenism at home, that it is 
absolutely impossible for us to conquer China 
for Christ, and especially not only to conquer 
China, but India, and Africa, and the islands of 
the sea; that it is worse than useless for us to 
summon our people to such a quixotic and impos- 



The Divine Purpose 17 

sible task, and that our wisest course is to still 
the fanatics and leave heathen nations with the 
religions they have followed for centuries and 
devote our energies to the salvation of America. 
We can only say in response to this criticism 
that we have attempted to speak the truth and 
the whole truth without concealing or abating 
one jot or tittle for effect. The first condition of 
successful war is sitting down and counting the 
cost. We have only two words to add in correc- 
tion of the false conclusions which the discour- 
aged may draw from the facts presented above. 

First, personally we do not summon a single Missionary 
soul to this task. The missionaries in foreign f^m"^"* 
fields are not the persons summoning the church 
at home to contribute men and money for the 
evangelization of the world. The churches at 
home are not the authorities summoning their 
members to make the tremendous sacrifices of 
men and money required to conquer the world 
for Christ. In a word, the summons is not ours. 
The summons was issued by Almighty God 
through his son Jesus Christ. All that any of us 
who are interested in missions pretend to do is 
simply to repeat the command : "Go ye, therefore, 
and make disciples of all the nations/' If, there- 
fore, you recoil before the summons, if you say 
it is a quixotic scheme which can never be carried 
out and which ought never to have been under- 



i8 God's Missionary Plan 

taken, put the blame where it belongs, back of 
the missionaries on the field, back of the Mission- 
ary Society at home, back of the churches at 
home, put the blame back on Jesus Christ; nay 
put it back upon Almighty God who sent his only 
begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to begin this enter- 
prise ; fight out your battle with him. It was not 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, nor all Chris- 
tendom combined, which issued the summons, but 
Jesus Christ himself who said: "Go ye into all 
the world and preach the gospel to the whole 
creation." The problem, therefore, is not a 
human problem. While sin is a human and Sa- 
tanic act, and contradicts rather than reveals the 
divine will, nevertheless the possibility of sin 
was contemplated by God from the first and 
Christ was a Lamb slain from the foundation of 
the world. It is an immense relief to feel that 
while the problem is human in its origin, it is 
divine in the prevision of its possibility, and in 
the provision to meet it. 
infinite Our second word is this : Not only is the com- 

Avaiiabie 8 man d God's, but the power is his also. The task 
is indeed appalling; but upon the other side are 
the resources of the Infinite. Put China with her 
countless millions, equaling the numbers in the 
United States and Europe combined, upon one 
side of the scale; recall again that it has taken 
ninety-five generations of Christian workers, 



Whole World- 
Problem 



The Divine Purpose 19 

1900 years of time, millions upon millions of 
lives and billions upon billions of dollars to bring 
Europe and America up to the point of civiliza- 
tion which we have thus far reached ; throw into 
the scale in which China rests India, Africa, 
Japan, and the islands of the sea ; raise the num- 
ber of the unevangelized from four hundred 
millions up to nine hundred millions and face the Facing the 
whole world-problem on its quantitative side at 
once; remember, further, that we cannot sepa- 
rate evangelization from Christianization, that 
God will not let us rest even when we have car- 
ried the message of salvation to the last human 
being on earth, but that we must help transform 
the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of 
our Lord and his Christ, and thus face the whole 
world-problem on its qualitative side at once. 
Now, put upon the other side of the scales, not 
our finite resources but the infinite resources of 
Almighty God, and if your soul has faith to catch 
the vision of the unseen, you will say: "Those 
that are for us are more than they that be against 
us." It is only as the problem drives us to God; 
it is only as the church hides in him, seeks from 
him wisdom and grace and power for the task, 
that there is the slightest hope of success. On 
the other hand, if we seek for the divine re- 
sources placed at our command, if we avail our- 
selves of the power of prayer, of the indwelling 



20 God's Missionary Plan 

of the Spirit, of the consecration of men and 
women and money which the Holy Ghost will 
inspire, and above all, if we remember that he 
goes before us and will be with us even unto 
the end of the world, and that our task is not to 
conquer nine hundred millions for Christ or even 
Letting Christ a single soul, but simply to obey Christ and let 
Make the ^im ma i Ke j-ftg CO nquest, then the task becomes 

Conquest A 

an exceedingly simple one. If we reject any part 
of the commission, the task is indeed impossible ; 
but if we believe and obey every clause of the 
commission, the task is not only possible, but 
comparatively easy, because the commission is 
preceded by the assurance that all authority in 
heaven and earth is given to Jesus and followed 
by the promise that he will be with us to the end. 
"All authority hath been given unto me in heaven 
and on earth. Go ye, therefore, and make disci- 
ples of all the nations, baptizing them into the 
name of the Father and of the Son and of the 
Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I commanded you : and lo, I am with 
you always, even unto the end of the world." 



CHAPTER II 
The Divine Order of Procedure 

Any fresh study of the Bible with reference to Personal and 
missions is attended with inextricable confusion Blessing 
unless we first recognize the narrower aspects of 
that Book. In the divine promise to Abraham, 
we read these strange words : "In blessing I will 
bless thee, and in multiplying I w r ill multiply thy 
seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand 
which is upon the seashore: and thy seed shall 
possess the gate of his enemies ; and in thy seed 
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." 
The first half of this passage contains the prom- 
ise of a personal blessing to Abraham and his 
seed, which extends even to the driving out of 
the enemies of Abraham's descendants. On the 
other side, the race blessing is universal in its 
terms; and the same Hebrew word for blessing 
is used to indicate that the nations of the earth 
shall receive a blessing, not only equal in quan- 
tity, but identical in quality with that promised to 
the chosen people — "And in thy seed shall all 
the nations of the earth be blessed." 

The greatness of Frederick Robertson's ser- p° r ™* nd 
mons is due in part to the fact that he always Factors 
strove to recognize the partial truth which in- 



22 God's Missionary Plan 

heres in every long-lived error and to put that 
partial truth in right relations to its complemen- 
tary truth. Let us also strive to do full justice 
to that deep conviction of the vast majority of 
Christians that only after one's duties to him- 
self, to his home, to his home church, and his 
nation have been fairly met is he at liberty to 
devote time or means to the evangelization of the 
world. We shall find that if the conviction of 
one's duty to his family and home church is taken 
as the whole truth, it furnishes a distorted con- 
ception of Christianity; but we shall find that if 
this conviction is kept in right relations to one's 
duty to the world, it finds ample warrant in na- 
ture and in the Bible. No man can work for 
the redemption of the race until he himself is 
redeemed. And the divine method of salvation 
is to seek pardon for one's self, then to begin 
with one's family, to proceed to one's neighbors, 
to strive for the salvation of one's nation, and to 
advance to the salvation of the world. 
Divine Our Calvinistic friends have shown a disposi- 

Htetor ^ !n t * on * n * ater y ears to broaden and soften their 
doctrine of divine election. On the other side, 
I am sure that the study of evolution in nature 
and the broader study of the Bible have led 
modern Arminians to recognize a divine election 
running through nature and through the Bible. 
Let us notice first, therefore, the underlying truth 



The Divine Order of Procedure 23 

of Calvinism, namely, the divine plan in the 
unfolding history of the race. 

"I will bless thee." It must be confessed that Primar y 

Jewish 

the first reading of the Bible reveals God's at- privilege 
tempt to call and to save the chosen people and 
his passing by other nations. So certainly was 
this the apparent teaching of the Old Testament 
that the most devout Jews, those best versed 
in the Scriptures, became Pharisees or Separa- 
tists, using that word in its good sense. They 
believed, on the one side, that the Jews should 
come out from all other nations and become a 
peculiar people of God; and, on the other side, 
they believed that God would exalt them above 
all the other nations of the earth, not as a means 
to an end, but as an end in itself. The view 
was based on what seemed to the Jews, and in- 
deed to all men down to modern times, the 
natural inequalities of men and of races. To the 
Jews there seemed to be a divine recognition of 
this inequality in their providential deliverance 
from the Egyptians, in the destruction of the 
Canaanites for their sake, and in the downfall 
of Babylon while the Jewish people were pre- 
served. Candid critics of the Bible recognize 
that the Pharisees embraced the most pious and 
patriotic and many of the ablest Jews, including 
Paul before his conversion. 

So frankly does the Old Testament teach the 



24 God's Missionary Plan 

Particularism d oc trine of particularism in blessings that some 

Misinter- r a a • a 

preted of the higher critics have adopted the erroneous 

conviction that the God of Israel was originally 
a tribal God, and that the Israelites themselves 
did not recognize the obligation of other nations 
to accept their tribal divinity. These critics cite 
the teachings of the Old Testament in regard 
to the extermination of the Canaanites, the prayer 
of the 137th Psalm for revenge upon one's 
enemies, the prayer of Jeremiah 10. 25, for 
God's wrath upon the heathen, and Jonah's 
anger at the sparing of Nineveh, as furnishing 
literary indications of the gradual but imperfect 
emergence of the Israelitish religion from the 
stage of worship of a tribal God. 

jesus' own There has been further cited in favor of the 

Action in its . . 

National particularistic conception of even the New Testa- 

Reiations me nt the fact that while Jesus called himself the 

Son of man, nevertheless he devoted his life to 

the Jewish race. When aroused by the cry of 

need of the outside world, he said: "I was not 

sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of 

Israel." It is still more striking that Jesus did 

not call a single apostle from the Gentile world. 

Surely there seems to be some sort of divine 

election running through the Bible. 

Light j n f avor of the home view that the Bible fully 

Family justifies our devotion to our families is the fact 

institution t h at q 0( j has placed us in this world, not as in- 



The Divine Order of Procedure 



25 



dividuals in relations of equal love and service 
to all men, but as families, the members of which 
stand in peculiar relations of love and service to 
each other. There are reciprocal duties and 
blessings attached to members of each household 
which cannot become universal. No sane Chris- 
tian advocates a community of wives and children 
as the end of Christian brotherhood. Paul goes 
so far as to teach: "If any provideth not for his 
own, and specially his own household, he hath 
denied the faith, and is worse than an unbe- 
liever/' Thus we see that the doctrine of per- 
sonal blessings runs through the New Testament 
as well as through the Old: "In blessing I will 
bless thee." 

Before missionaries condemn their brothers Missionaries 
at home for unduly restricting their gifts Essentiaf 
and services to their families, their home Privileges 
churches, and their native land, let us see whether 
they have found complete altruism practicable. 
Missionaries go to Africa and China for the 
specific purpose of Christianizing these peoples. 
But they do not permit their zeal for the salva- 
tion of the children of the Africans and Chinese 
to lead them to put their children side by side 
with native children in the schoolroom and on 
the streets. Nor are they guilty of pride in their 
action. Carrying the doctrine of the equality of 
all men in the sight of God to the extent of put- 



26 God's Missionary Plan 

ting their children side by side with the natives 
during the first fifteen years of their lives would 
lead, not to the salvation of the heathen, but to 
the corruption of their own. Nor do the major- 
ity of missionaries live in Chinese houses, wear 
the Chinese dress, or live on native food, because 
they think they can render the Chinese a higher 
service than that. Hence, however altruistic the 
missionaries are, they are forced to claim for their 
children, and for themselves over and over again, 
special privileges which cannot at present be en- 
joyed by all the Chinese. "In blessing I will 
bless thee." 
Denomina- A more striking illustration of our Phari- 
Loyaity saism is found, still possibly in its good sense, 
in our denominational pride and loyalty. Each 
of us confidently claims for his church the prom- 
ise, "In blessing I will bless thee," as if that 
promise were made by a Methodist God to a 
Methodist preacher, or by an American Board 
God to the Congregational Church. Certainly 
the Roman Catholic Church holds to the divine 
authority of that hierarchy, and the Episcopal 
Church holds to the apostolic succession, and the 
rest of us regard our churches as ends in them- 
selves, destined to spread over the globe and to 
exist until the millennium. 

Summing up the argument, therefore, we find 
in many passages of the Bible personal blessings 



The Divine Order of Procedure 27 

promised to Abraham and to the Jewish nation Particular 
which are limited to the chosen people; the ablest inthe^ 
and most devout Jews were led by their race Divine 
pride and early exclusiveness to transform the 
Old Testament into Pharisaism. An early Calvin- 
ist cited in favor of the particularism of the New 
Testament the saying of Jesus that he was not 
sent save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, 
and the fact that he did not choose a single apos- 
tle from the Gentile world. All Christians, in- 
cluding missionaries, seek blessings for their own 
children which they do not strive with equal time 
and effort to secure for every other child on 
earth. All missionaries labor for the upbuilding 
of their own churches and for the advancement 
of the particular work committed to them in the 
mission as they do not labor for the advancement 
of other churches or of other forms of service in 
their own church. In a w'ord, human nature is 
finite and cannot strive with equal energy for 
universal ends. Surely, therefore, a recognition 
of the limitations of human nature and a study 
of the Bible alike must force upon us the admis- 
sion of a divine election in the bestowal of spe- 
cial blessings upon individuals and families and 
races as the teaching of the Word of God and 
the practice of the saintliest lives. 

Finding, therefore, as divine a warrant for True Ground 
home as for foreign missions, we must judge 



of Rome 
Missions 



28 God's Missionary Plan 

as to where we shall put our means by a study 
of the comparative needs of each. Remember 
that the home work must be maintained : for the 
salvation of our own, as the base of attack upon 
the unevangelized world, and a base cf supplies 
for the invading army. Indeed were Christian- 
ity in the United States in danger of annihilation, 
even the leaders in missionary enterprise would 
favor abandoning the outposts and defending the 
citadel. We have not the slightest sympathy 
with those either at home or on the mission field 
who draw a distinction between the minister and 
the missionary, and put the latter upon a higher 
plane. "As his share is that goeth down to the 
battle, so shall his share be that tarrieth by the 
baggage : they shall share alike." 
Equalization a g u t as there are at home a hundred Chris- 
tians who see and feel the need immediately 
before their eyes where one has the prophetic 
vision of the world field, you may be called, 
just because you are a statesman of the king- 
dom, to give your funds for work which lays 
hold upon the ends of the earth and looks toward 
the consummation of the ages. We must bear 
in mind that the Christianization of the home 
lands is an even greater task than the evangeliza- 
tion of the world. It demands common sense, 
unrecognized service, and daily drudgery. But 
we must also bear in mind that the first, last, 



Requisite 



The Divine Order of Procedure 29 

and middle step in the Christianization of the 
home land is so to transform the church and 
the nation by the cross of Christ as to lead us at 
least to tell the good news of redemption to all 
for whom Christ died. The entire problem in- 
volved in the Christianization of the race is the 
overthrow of selfishness in the human heart and R ep i a ce self 
the enthronement of Christ therein. If the mo- 
tive which prompts one to stay in the home land 
is a greater desire to serve, then the unknown home 
brother may wear in heaven a brighter crown 
than the apparently more heroic brother on the 
field. If the men and means are proportionally 
divided for the task to be accomplished then one 
need make no choice as between the two, but offer 
himself or his means for each alike. But how 
can we destroy American selfishness and enthrone 
Christ by retaining for eighty-five million people 
in our own country more than $38,000,000 out of 
the $40,000,000 given by us for all purposes? 
Have we a proportional division of the laborers 
in the vineyard with one minister in the United 
States for each 554 of the population and one 
in China for each 219,000 of the population? 
Is not the first and most important step in 
the Christianization of America the teaching 
of our people such unselfishness as will lead them 
more equally to divide the total contributions 
given by themselves for Christian work between 



30 God's Missionary Plan 

the eighty-five millions at home and the nine 
hundred millions in foreign lands? Dr. Wat- 
kinson, editor of the London Quarterly Review, 
states admirably the Christian philosophy which 
indissolubly joins together our home and foreign 
work and which will not let us neglect the latter 
in our zeal for the former. "The missionary en- 
terprise is the very salt of our civilization. 
Wherein lies our safety ? In spiritual magnanim- 
ity. If you want to take care of your empire, 
take care of your missions. The guarantee for 
your splendor is your sacrifice. You keep your 
wealth as you give it away in noble causes. The 
tonic for luxury is the generosity that does and 
dares for the perishing. If you want to keep 
your place with the topmost nations, you must 
do it by a tremendous stoop to those who are at 
the base. If you want to put a ring of fire around 
the grandest civilization that this world has ever 
seen, put a belt of mission stations around your 
empire, and your empire will last until the mil- 
lennium." 
Home One of the noblest, most generous laymen in 

Interests ■»«•*«• 1 « •»*■• 

Moving Methodism recently wrote me that as the Mis- 
individuais sionary Society had turned over vast sums of 
money to the foreign field and left the city in 
which he lives with its great population and its 
problems in city evangelization only $3,000, he 
felt that he must devote his contributions to the 



The Divine Order of Procedure 



31 



evangelization of the foreigners in that city, and 
to the home needs in America. This man is not 
narrow in his sympathies, because to my personal 
knowledge he has shown rare generosity to at 
least one sister denomination, from which he 
could not receive the slightest personal benefit. It 
seemed to him, as it seems to everyone on first 
thought, that nearly two million dollars raised 
for missions, and, as he supposed, contributed 
entirely to foreign countries, gives the mission- 
aries a far better equipment for their work than 
our pastors have at home. One of the most un- 
selfish and intelligent presiding elders, carrying 
the burden of foreign populations in a Western 
state, has expressed similar opinions to me. I 
am sure, therefore, that there is need of a frank 
consideration in our church and in other churches 
of the comparative needs of the home and foreign 
fields. 

It must be remembered that down to the pres- 
ent year the Missionary Society of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church has used the missionary collec- 
tions for work at home as well as abroad. In- 
deed, the purpose of the Missionary Society 
frankly stated in all our Disciplines has been to 
secure funds "for the better prosecution of mis- 
sion work in the United States and in foreign 
countries." Hence, of the total receipts of the 
Missionary Society, forty-two and a half per cent 



Twofold Work 
of the 
Missionary 
Society 



32 God's Missionary Plan 

have been devoted to the home field and fifty- 
seven and a half per cent have been devoted to 
the foreign field. The General Conference of 
1904 provided for the division of the Missionary 
Society into the Board of Home Missions and 
Church Extension, and the Board of Foreign 
Missions ; and therefore, from now on, the mis- 
sionary collection received for Foreign Missions 
will be divided among the foreign countries. 
one to Remember that the home missionary collec- 

Twenty-six 

tion will be devoted to the United States alone, 
while the foreign missionary collection must 
be divided between twenty-six foreign coun- 
tries, 
one collection Remember that the proportion of the foreign 
Needs^ missionary collection which reaches any one of 

these twenty-six foreign lands must supply in 
that land the needs which are met by all the 
home collections combined. To illustrate: 
current i # A vastly larger sum of money than all the 
benevolent collections put together is raised each 
year in the United States for the support of 
pastors and the maintenance of the home 
churches. But the missionary collection sent to 
the twenty-six foreign lands must be used largely 
for the support of the missionaries, and later of 
the native pastors and teachers. Perhaps some- 
one asks, in surprise : "Are you not training the 
new converts in these lands to self-support ?" 



The Divine Order of Procedure 33 

Yes, and the converts in most heathen lands and 
perhaps in every heathen land, are giving a far 
larger proportion of their incomes for the sup- 
port of the Gospel than are American Christians. 
But we must remember that at the opening of 
our work in heathen lands we have no foreign 
converts to be trained in self-support. We ac- 
quire our membership slowly. Besides, we at 
home do not dream of the poverty of the pagans 
at the time of their conversion. It has taken the 
Methodists in America one hundred and fifty 
years to advance from the financial condition of 
the Salvation Army to their present financial con- 
dition. But the members of the Salvation Army 
have comforts undreamed of by the people in 
Africa, India, and China. To ask these new con- 
verts from heathenism to become immediately 
self-supporting is like asking your baby in the 
cradle to earn its own living. 

2. Some portion of the missionary money de- Buildings 
voted to the foreign countries must be used to 
build churches and parsonages. We have had 
for years a Church Extension Society in the 
United States to aid in the building of needy 
churches. That Society with the several million 
dollars contributed to it has achieved remarkable 
results in the spread of American Methodism. 
But at the founding of the Church Extension 
Society, we had in the United States literally 



34 God's Missionary Plan 

thousands of churches already built. The funds 
of the Church Extension Society have been used, 
as the name implies, to extend the work of Meth- 
odism in the United States. Upon the other 
hand, at the beginning of missionary work in 
foreign lands we must use most of our small pit- 
tance received by each foreign country in build- 
ing parsonages and churches. For instance, the 
Missionary Committee at its last meeting voted 
to open work in France, and devoted $5,000 to 
that purpose. Suppose Bishop Burt decides to 
open the work in Paris. Plainly his first duty 
is to secure, either by building a parsonage or 
renting a house, a home for the missionary to 
occupy ; for how can he appeal to Parisian Meth- 
odism to build a parsonage for the pastor when 
possibly we have not a French Methodist in 
Paris ? 
christian , 3. We have still another collection in our 
Church, entirely separate from the funds raised 
for the support of our home churches, and from 
the Church Extension collection, namely, the col- 
lection for the Tract Society and the Sunday 
School Union. In addition to the money received 
by this collection, we secure large amounts from 
subscriptions to our periodical literature. But 
we have already provided at our hand in America 
an immense amount of Christian literature of the 
Methodist type, not to speak of the libraries 



The Divine Order of Procedure 35 

upon libraries of general theology and Christian 
literature. Upon the other hand, in China, we 
must absolutely create a Christian literature. 
There is not a single text-book on philosophy 
written from a Christian point of view like the 
books of Professor Bowne. There is not a single 
volume of Methodist theology in existence for 
the more than 429,000,000 Chinese today. All 
the Protestant missionaries in China are united 
in the revision of the Bible in Chinese, because 
our early translations were made before we knew 
the language well enough to translate the book 
accurately. The New Testament is now finished, 
and the Old Testament is yet to be revised. The 
Christian churches have agreed upon a transla- 
tion of a hundred hymns of the ages to be used 
by us all in our worship. And these two books 
are the only two volumes thus far agreed upon 
for common use in China. Do you not see how 
great is the need of funds for creating and put- 
ting all kinds of Christian literature in reach 
of the 429,000,000 in China, as compared with 
our needs for additional Christian literature in 
the United States? 

But China is only one of the twenty-six coun- The Bible 
tries to be supplied. In India we are now preach- 
ing in thirty-seven dialects, and the Bible should 
be put into each in order to reach the people of 
each region. In Africa we must create a written 



36 God's Missionary Plan 

language or languages into which the Bible may 
be put for the Africans, or else teach these im- 
mense, ignorant masses of people one or more 
European languages. The American Bible So- 
ciety and the British Foreign Bible Society are 
doing work of incalculable value in supplying 
foreign lands with the Word of God. But they 
cannot publish even a line of note or comment 
on the Word; and they need from three to five 
million dollars to put the Bible in the home of 
every Chinese family able to read and write in 
China alone, not to speak of other needy nations. 
Fortunately the Tract Society of our church also 
is world-wide in its sympathies. But it was able 
to send to China last year only $1,550. A mo- 
ment's consideration shows how inadequate are 
these separate provisions of the Bible and Tract 
Societies for the needs of pagan nations. Part of 
one single Foreign Missionary collection must, 
therefore, be used to supply the need for litera- 
ture in addition to supporting pastors, building 
churches, parsonages, etc. 
Education 4. We have in the United States an exceed- 
ingly important educational collection. It now 
represents the work of two former societies in 
our church. The helping of many young white 
students and of many more colored students de- 
pends upon the annual educational collection of 
Methodism. But the smallest part of the money 



The Divine Order of Procedure 37 

used for Methodist education comes through 
our educational collections. For instance, during 
1906 more than $4,000,000 were secured for 
our colleges and universities, for our academies 
and seminaries and theological schools, by private 
solicitation. Here again, turning to the foreign 
mission fields, the single missionary collection in 
addition to the three purposes named above must 
supply all the funds secured for education at 
home by the annual public collection and private 
solicitation. Better still for the home field, and 
worse for the foreign field, under all Christian 
governments, including the United States, enor- 
mous sums are raised annually by taxation and 
devoted to the education of our children ; whereas 
no pagan government by its own initiative has 
originated and maintained a system of public 
education. The missionary collection must, there- 
fore, supply us in the twenty-six pagan lands 
not only with parsonages, with churches, with 
pastors, with literature, but with colleges, pre- 
paratory schools, and seminaries, and in addition 
with day-schools, corresponding to the common 
schools in the United States maintained by vast 
sums raised from taxes. 

5c Turning to the hospitals to be supported imperative 
largely from this single missionary collection, the Hospitals 
need of heathen lands is still more appalling. 
But the comparison already made sickens the 



38 God's Missionary Plan 

heart of one at work in the foreign field. I 
cannot press it further. Suffice it to say that the 
members of the Methodist Episcopal Church con- 
tribute by public and private gifts some $38,000,- 
000 a year for the identical objects among our 
85,000,000 people for which they contribute 
$1,754,239 a year for use among over 800,000,000 
needy heathen peoples. 
a Fairer Making our illustration still more concrete, 

F unds° n ° y° u contribute $38,000,000 a year for use at home 
among 85,000,000 people for the same objects for 
which you contribute $250,000 a year for use in 
China, among 429,000,000 of your more needy 
brothers and sisters. God calls me to present the 
facts to you, but he has made you responsible 
for the decision. If you still feel that the home 
field is the more needy, then bestow your gifts 
in America ; but if you feel that Christ would like 
to see a fairer division of the funds, then help to 
make it. 
verdict of a \y e close this brief resume of foreign needs 
Man with a quotation from one who is not a mission- 

ary or a minister but a clear-headed, successful 
business man. John Wanamaker, having visited 
the foreign field, writes : "In all my life I never 
saw such an opportunity for the investment of 
money. As I looked at the little churches, 
schools, and hospitals and inquired as to the 
original cost, I wished a hundred times I had 



The Divine Order of Procedure 39 

known twenty-five years ago what I learned half 
a year ago." 

Summing up the entire argument of this chap- Com pr ehen - 
ter upon the relation of the home to the foreign Love 
work, we find that while Jesus makes the indi- 
vidual so far an end in himself as to be subject 
only to God, and makes "beginning from Jeru- 
salem" the divine order of the kingdom, he 
clearly teaches that the Law of Love is universal, 
and that the training of our children and the 
building up of our home churches must con- 
stantly aim at equal blessings for God's other 
children. Christ furnishes the solution of the 
problem which confronts the modern church and 
modern civilization by recognizing God, neigh- 
bor, and self as the three everlasting factors in 
the moral and spiritual kingdom and in placing 
the three in their divine order. He did not deny 
God, which is atheism ; nor, with Confucius, con- 
fess ignorance of him, which is agnosticism ; nor, 
with Haeckel, lose God in the physical universe, 
which is materialism. He did not sacrifice the 
individual to the community, which is socialism ; 
or make the public the victim of personal greed, 
which is individualism; or sink both man and 
society in God, which is pantheism. Rather he 
put each man on an equality with his neighbor 
and both in perfect obedience to God, thus pro- 
viding for a Christian commonwealth or world- 



Selfishness 
Sure of 



40 God's Missionary Plan 

family, based on the fundamental truth of the 
Bible, the Fatherhood of God. 

Is it not a striking fact that as parents have 
Defeat centered their affections and bestowed all their 
wealth upon their children, these children have 
lost their spiritual fiber. Wealth, bestowed on 
families, has ruined so many boys as to give rise 
to the adage, "Where the father began, the son 
leaves off." More than half our rich men's sons 
would be better off had they been born poor. 
What is this but a demonstration that family 
selfishness is a violation of the law of the uni- 
verse? The same law holds in regard to ecclesi- 
astical and national selfishness. Can you point 
to any church or nation on earth which has 
morally or financially impoverished itself by help- 
ing the weaker peoples of the earth? On the 
contrary, whenever a nation or a church becomes 
wealthy and then self-centered and labors for 
self-aggrandizement, or yields to self-indulgence, 
its sudden destruction or slow decline is one of 
the most impressive lessons of human history. 
"There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet 
more ; and there is that withholdeth more than is 
meet, but it tendeth only to want." Jesus states 
the law for nations and churches as well as for 
individuals in its positive form: "Give, and it 
shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed 
down, shaken together, running over, shall they 



The Divine Order of Procedure 41 

give into your bosom. For with what measure 
ye mete it shall be measured to you again." 

There is indeed a divine election of individuals Election to 

. . . Divine Duties 

and of nations; but it is an election to the per- 
formance of divine duties, not to the enjoyment 
of divine prerogatives. There is indeed a divine 
call of individuals and of nations running 
through the Bible. It is a call of the individual 
to serve the family, and of the family to serve the 
nation, and of the nation to serve the race, 
and of the race to glorify God. Only as both 
the individual and the community center in God 
can our finite resources be reinforced by the 
infinite riches of heaven. It is only as man 
ceases to be self-centered and becomes God-cen- 
tered that he is able to do all things. This is the 
secret of faith. Here is the key to the whole 
problem which confronts us. If God is the means 
and I am the end for which the universe exists, 
then egotism is religion. If God is the means 
and my family or my clan is the end, then aris- 
tocracy is religion. If God is the means and 
America or Germany or Great Britain or China 
is the end, then patriotism is religion. Here was 
the error of the Jews. Will the United States 
repeat the Jewish sin? If God is the means and 
the Methodist Episcopal Church or the Roman 
Catholic Church is the end for which the uni- 
verse exists, then ecclesiasticism is religion. But 



42 God's Missionary Plan 

if God is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the 
last, the beginning and the end of creation, then 
the individual and the family, and the nations, 
and the churches all find their true end and stand 
together in right relation only in him. And so 
Paul sums up the life of the universe in the pro- 
foundest text in the Bible: "In him all things 
consist." 



Revelation 



CHAPTER III 
The Old Testament and Missions 

The end of revelation is nothing else than the Missions the 
salvation of all the earth. "In thy seed shall all 
the nations of the earth be blessed. ,, Beginning 
at Jerusalem is indeed the method prescribed by 
Christ. But discipling all nations is the goal he 
sets before us. The divine warrant for missions 
is found in the reply to the question whether the 
divine method of beginning at Jerusalem is in- 
consistent with and invalidates the divine com- 
mand to disciple all the nations, or whether it is 
not rather the providential preparation for carry- 
ing out that command? Putting the question in 
another form : Shall we make our personal salva- 
tion or the salvation of our families or of our 
native land, an end in itself or an end in God? 
If, indeed, all things consist in him, if Christ is 
right in giving us the first command and God is 
indeed supreme in the universe and love of him 
is our first duty, then the end of all Christian 
activity is not myself or my nation or my church, 
but God ; and all our striving, wherever it begin, 
can end only in bringing back to God that which 
is his own by creation and by redemption. 

Another method of settling this question is to 
43 



44 God's Missionary Plan 

The Range of determine what is the range of the atonement. 

n^nf t0ne " If Christ died for only a portion of humanity, and 
if the portion which he passed by and left to 
eternal doom is made up of races, and if we can 
ascertain what race or nation is non-elect, then 
we can safely pass that nation by. But if Jesus 
Christ's last command is to go into all the world 
and preach the Gospel to the whole creation, then 
all elections of individuals or of nations found 
in the Bible must be interpreted as providential 
preparations for the evangelization of all man- 
kind. If Jesus Christ tasted death for every man, 
then all men are potentially redeemed, and each 
one's salvation is possible. Suppose, to use 
Henry C. Mabie's illustration, a poor widow and 
six children were living in poverty and disease 
and ignorance. Suppose that you alone knew of 
an abundance of gold, left in a vault unknown 
to the family, sufficient for the supply of all their 
needs, the education of the children, etc., and 
suppose you knew that the widow has the key 
by which she can unlock these hidden treasures ; 
and that you left them year after year to live and 
die in poverty and disease and ignorance, be- 
cause it was not convenient for you to go and 
tell them the good news: What would mankind 
think of you ? Surely the unevangelized peoples 
of the earth are living in poverty and disease and 
ignorance and sin. Surely the Christians of the 



The Old Testament and Missions 45 

world can reach them, if it is really important 
that we do so. If Christ has died for them, and 
if they are possible heirs of God and joint heirs 
with Jesus Christ, they have potential riches for 
time and eternity of infinite worth. Moreover 
we can tell these suffering nations and races 
where to find and how to apply the key which 
will open to them this divine storehouse. What 
shall we say in the day of judgment, if like the 
priest and the Levite, we pass by on the other 
side, and leave heathen humanity unhelped by 
the wayside? 

The very definition of God given to Moses, "I The Definition 
am that I am," excludes the possibility of any 
other gods. It is barely possible Moses felt 
that God might be the God of the Jews only, 
and so he asked his name. But the divine answer 
renders impossible any partial conception of God. 
We define an object by placing it on one side of 
the proposition, and then naming as the other 
part of the proposition the elements or parts 
which compose it. For instance, Water = H2O. 
This is a complete definition of water because 
it puts over against water, on one side, the con- 
stituents which compose it, on the other side. 
So, if we put God on one side of the proposition, 
the Old Testament insists that w T e put nothing 
less than God upon the other side of the propo- 
sition. "I am that I am" is God's answer to 



46 God's Missionary Plan 

Moses. In this divine definition, God = God. 
You cannot put Jehovah on one side of the propo- 
sition and complete the proposition by adding 
Jehovah equals the God of the Jews. You cannot 
even make Jehovah the Lord of all the earth, and 
say Jehovah equals the God of our planet. This 
definition sweeps us beyond the conception of 
tribal divinities — one God for the Anglo-Saxons 
and another for the Chinese; but this definition 
is not broad enough. You cannot put God on 
one side of the proposition and put the entire 
range of creation on the other side, and say 
God equals the universe. This is pantheism. Put 
Jehovah on one side of the proposition, and revel- 
ation declares that the only other thing, person, 
or god which you can put opposite him and make 
equal to him is Jehovah himself. "I am that I 
am" ; God equals God. In the very definition of 
God, therefore, the Old Testament furnishes our 
missionary charter. 
The Account jf we { Urn ^o the account of creation, again 
we discover the universal claims of the Bible. 
The first chapters of Genesis, with the variations 
which on their very face appear between the first 
and second chapters, were not given to teach us 
science, although there is a remarkable corre- 
spondence between the order of creation revealed 
in the first chapter and later discovered by 
science. But these first chapters of Genesis were 



The Old Testament and Missions 



47 



ment 



given to teach us theology, to make clear to us 
that God — God alone — is the creator of the 
heavens and the earth and all that is therein. The 
accounts of creation found in Genesis carry us 
infinitely beyond the conception of a tribal God. 

Once more, the story of creation makes the The First 
first commandment universal, and banishes all 
other worship. 'Thou shalt have no other gods 
besides me." The universal character of the Old 
Testament religion, therefore, is found in the 
very definition of God, in the account of creation, 
and in the first commandment. We have no 
more right to limit the light of the Sun of 
Righteousness to the Anglo-Saxons than we have 
the right or the power to limit the sunlight to the 
European or American continents. 

We have not the slightest objection to a Par- 
liament of Religions, because we are sure that 
any comparison of other faiths with our own will 
reveal the universal Lordship of Jesus Christ. 
But we protest against men striving in a Parlia- 
ment of Religions or outside its walls in the name 
of breadth and liberality to confine Christianity 
to the Anglo-Saxon race, and to leave the Chinese 
to Confucianism and the people of India to 
Hinduism. It is a false liberalism which says: 
The Chinese have Confucius and the Western 
nations Christ, and we ought not to disturb the 
empire and create strife by attempting to over- 



Our God and 
Christ for the 
World 



48 God's Missionary Plan 

throw established customs and national religions. 
While such statements smack of breadth and cul- 
ture, they indicate a reversion to the old doctrine 
of tribal divinities. If the God of the Bible is the 
God of the Anglo-Saxons and Buddha is the God 
of the people of India, then we have no right to 
foist our tribal divinity on an alien race. But 
this theory, instead of representing breadth, is 
based on pride and bigotry. Its advocates as- 
sume, as did the Jews of old, that the God of 
revelation belongs to us alone. Pray how did we 
capture him from the Jews to whom he originally 
belonged? If God is the God of the universe, if 
Jesus Christ is really he through whom all things 
were made and without whom was not anything 
made that hath been made, then he is the Saviour 
of all men, and we have no justification for rob- 
bing the people of India and of China of their 
birthright in the name of liberality. 
a Racial j n the C3 ]\ f Abraham, which is the earliest 

Abraham's record of the beginnings of the Jewish race, we 
CaU find the personal and the universal aspects of sal- 

vation : "I will bless thee ; . . . And in thy seed 
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." In 
the original call of the Hebrew race, in the divine 
ideal placed before the Jews, is the revelation of 
their personal privileges and blessings simply as 
a preparation for their service of all the nations 
of the earth. A blessing for the race inheres in 



The Old Testament and Missions 49 

the covenant with Abraham. The call of the 
Jews is missionary in its very terms. 

Not only the definition of God given by Missionary 
inspiration, the story of creation, the first com- Psa i ms 
mandment, and the call of Abraham are mission- 
ary in their character, but we find also in the 
Psalms the conception of the personal and the 
universal favors of God: 

"God be merciful unto us, and bless us, 
And cause his face to shine upon us; 
That thy way may be known upon the earth, 
Thy salvation among all nations." 

"The earth is Jehovah's, and the fullness thereof; 
The world, and they that dwell therein." 

It is absurd to say that such a literature origi- 
nated in the conception of God as a tribal God 
or the God of the Jews alone. 

"Jehovah reign eth; let the earth rejoice; 
Let the multitude of the isles be glad." 

China is in that first refrain, and Japan is in the 
second. 

"Oh sing unto Jehovah a new song: 
Sing unto Jehovah, all the earth. 

Declare his glory among the nations, 
His marvelous works among all the peoples. 
For great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised: 
He is to be feared above all gods. 



50 God's Missionary Plan 

For all the gods of the peoples are idols [things 

of naught] ; 
But Jehovah made the heavens. 
Honor and majesty are before him: 
Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. 
Ascribe unto Jehovah, ye kindreds of the peoples, 

Oh worship Jehovah in holy array: 
Tremble before him all the earth. 

"Say among the nations, Jehovah reigneth : 
The world also is established that it cannot be 

moved: 
He will judge the peoples with equity. 
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; 
Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof; 
Let the field exult, and all that is therein; 
Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy 
Before Jehovah; for he cometh, 
For he cometh to judge the earth: 
He will judge the world with righteousness, 
And the peoples with his truth." 

Surely the breadth and sweep of such Psalms 

shows that the missionary conception is part of 

the web and woof of the Old Testament. 

Evangelic Turning to the prophets, we find equally clear 

ofthe the missionary character of the Bible. Wit- 

prophets ness the fine irony of Isaiah's description of the 

idolater buying a tree and using a part of it to 

bake his bread and turning part of it into an 

image made with his own hands and then falling 

down before it and worshiping it as his god. 



The Old Testament and Missions 51 

Is it not striking that the very name for idols or 
gods found in the Old Testament means empti- 
ness, nothingness? "His molten image is false- 
hood, and there is no breath in them. They are 
vanity [or emptiness], a work of delusion." And 
so Isaiah so far from limiting Jehovah to Israel, 
and surrendering other nations to their so-called 
gods cried out : "Let the earth hear, and the full- 
ness thereof, the world, and all things that come 
forth from it. . . . Thou art the God, even thou 
alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou 
hast made heaven and earth. . . . That all the 
kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art jeremiah, 
Jehovah, even thou only." Again Isaiah cries: andMicah 
"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of 
the earth ; for I am God, and there is none else." 
Jeremiah's cry sweeps beyond the Jews: "O 
Earth, Earth, Earth, hear the word of Jehovah." 
Micah foretells the latter days when the Lord's 
name shall be established in the top of the moun- 
tains; and all peoples shall flow unto it. "And 
many nations shall go and say, Come ye, and let 
us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the 
house of the God of Jacob ; and he will teach us 
of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. . . . 
And he will judge between many peoples, and 
will decide concerning strong nations afar off: 
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, 
and their spears into pruning-hooks ; nation 



52 God's Missionary Plan 

shall not lift up sword against nation, neither 
shall they learn war any more." Habakkuk sings 
of the time when "the earth shall be filled with the 
knowledge of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters 
cover the sea." Above the babel of conflicting 
religions and heathen worship, listen to Zecha- 
riah's triumphant song arising: "He shall speak 
peace unto the nations: and his dominion shall 
be from sea to sea, and from the River to the 
ends of the earth." Then Malachi hears the 
Lord God Almighty sending back the glad re- 
frain : "For from the rising of the sun even unto 
the going down of the same my name shall be 
great among the Gentiles ; and in every place in- 
cense shall be offered unto my name, . . . for 
my name shall be great among the Gentiles, saith 
Jehovah of hosts." 

We have thus hastily presented only glimpses 
claims of the whole sweep of the Old Testament in re- 

gard to the universal claims of God to be the 
creator and only rightful ruler of the universe. 
If anyone will read the Old Testament with the 
thought of the universal claims of God and the 
missionary character of the Jewish religion in 
mind, the scales will fall from his eyes as they 
fell from Paul's, and he will find a missionary 
sweep in revelation rising infinitely above the 
Pharisaism of the Jews. 

As if to make assurance doubly sure, we have 



Breadth of 
Old Testament 



The Old Testament and Missions 53 
two books in the Old Testament which seem to Purpose of the 

, * , . , r . Book of Ruth 

have been inspired largely for a missionary pur- 
pose. The one is the book of Ruth. Ruth was a 
Moabitess ; that is, she belonged to the race which 
the Jews had been commanded to annihilate, a 
race whose corruption merited annihilation, and 
whose destruction in general would have been 
for the good of humanity. But to show that this 
harsh command rested upon the law of each 
nation, as of each individual, reaping what it 
sows, and was not a mere arbitrary decree, the 
Bible presents this picture of one member of that 
nation, who, because she rose above her inherit- 
ance and environment and sought pardon and 
protection at the hands of the God of all the 
earth, was providentially guided to the knowl- 
edge of the true God and at last was incorporated 
into the chosen people. Ruth married a Hebrew 
immigrant, and through him learned to love the 
true God. Mahlon and Chilion — her husband and 
her brother-in-law, and also her father-in-law, 
all died. Her mother-in-law, Naomi, heartbroken 
and bereft of her natural protectors, in a foreign 
land, resolved to go back to her own people, and 
generously relieved her daughters-in-law of all 
further care of her. Ruth refused to accept the 
proffered relief and remain with her own people. 
"Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my 
God," was the high resolve of the Moabitess. 



54 God's Missionary Plan 

And through her choice of the ideals of the Jews 
and her acceptance of the Jewish faith Ruth 
was incorporated into the Jewish nation; and a 
Moabitess, the child of an outlawed nation, be- 
came the grandmother of the noblest king of 
Israel and the ancestress of the Lord. The brief 
story of Ruth, who in her sorrow turned to the 
God of the universe for comfort, is the inspired 
effort to teach the Jews that their God is no tribal 
divinity, but the God and Father of us all. The 
book of Ruth was inspired by the Holy Spirit 
to reveal the universal and missionary character 
of the Old Testament religion. 
Book of jonah Men have sometimes stumbled over the strange 
Jewish miracle of the book of Jonah. I have no quarrel 

Narrowness with critics who regard the book as an enlarged 
prototype of one of the parables of Jesus, written 
for the instruction of mankind. It teaches the 
divine lesson equally well whether we regard it 
as real biography or as an enlarged parable or 
story inspired by the Holy Ghost for a providen- 
tial purpose. But personally I find no difficulty 
in accepting the miracle, because, aside from the 
miracles of resurrection, I find no other miracle 
in the Bible with so strong a moral warrant as 
that connected with the book of Jonah. The 
Jews had become fully imbued with the Pharisaic 
ideal. Their leaders had emphasized the call to 
come out from among the nations and to become 



The Old Testament and Missions 55 

a peculiar people so long and so urgently that 
many of the people had come to regard the God 
of the universe as merely the divinity of the 
Jewish nation. It was to overcome this Jewish 
narrowness, to teach that Jehovah is the God and 
Father of us all, and that Judaism must expand 
into the universal religion, that the book of 
Jonah was written. Surely if ever there was a 
miracle with a moral warrant, the miracle found 
in the book of Jonah has that support. The 
whole book is a divine effort to induce a Jew to 
become an evangelist to the people at Nineveh; 
it is God's summons to the Jewish people to 
missionary activity. 

You remember that after Jonah is subdued by A Summons to 

1111 -^. 1 , . . * Evangelize the 

the hand of God and is constrained to go upon Nations 
the journey and to deliver the divine message, 
he sits by in a surly mood because the message 
has been recognized as from God and the people 
have repented. Jonah apparently would not have 
been troubled over a call to announce the doom 
of a heathen people ; but he was angered by the 
fact that an alien race listened to the voice of 
God and that God proposed to spare them. He 
is the Old Testament prototype of the elder son 
in the Parable of the Prodigal. How tender is 
the closing verse, in which God indicates that his 
care extends, not only to the heathen people, but 
even to the dumb beasts! After God sent the 



56 God's Missionary Plan 

sun to smite the gourd and Jonah's anger had 
been aroused, God said: "Doest thou well to be 
angry for the gourd?" And Jonah said: "I do 
well to be angry, even unto death." Then saith 
the Lord : "Thou hast had regard for the gourd, 
for which thou hast not labored, neither madest 
it to grow, which came up in a night and perished 
in a night: and should not I have regard for 
Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than 
sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern 
between their right hand and their left hand ; and 
also much cattle?" There is nothing more ten- 
der in the Parable of the Prodigal than this 
closing phrase, "And also much cattle." Surely 
the God whose care extends even to the children 
who know not their right hand from their left 
and to the dumb brutes which perish cannot be 
indifferent to the eternal destiny of any of his 
children. The book of Jonah is an Old Testa- 
ment summons to evangelize the nations. 
Jewish sepa- While, therefore, we all recognize the divine 
Means to an ca ll an< i separation of the Jews from other na- 
End tions for their spiritual training, we must recog- 

nize that the Bible makes this separation and 
training only a means to an end. The object of 
the separation of the Jews, the purpose of their 
training, was that they might achieve for them- 
selves immortal glory by helping God redeem 
what he alone had created and by bringing in 



Conception 



The Old Testament and Missions 57 

that glad time when the earth shall be filled with 
the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the 
waters cover the sea. The doctrine of missions, 
therefore, does not rest upon some particular 
passage of the Old Testament ; it rests upon the 
fundamental conception of the Old Testament as Fundamental 
a whole. If the Old Testament teaches in Genesis 
the universal creatorship of God; if in the first 
commandment it demands his worship alone ; 
if in its definition of God it makes him all in 
all; if the very name it uses for an idol signi- 
fies nothingness ; if in Psalms and Prophets it 
summons all the ends of the earth to praise him ; 
if it narrates the divine attempt in Ruth and 
Jonah to turn the Jews from Pharisees into mis- 
sionaries, then it does not for a moment permit 
us to rest in the doctrine of the ancient or the 
modern Pharisees that the kingdom of heaven on 
earth belongs to a particular race. The mission- 
ary character of the Bible inheres in the very 
texture of the Old Testament. "And in thy seed 
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." 



tions 



CHAPTER IV 
The New Testament and Missions 
Book of Turning to the New Testament, we find the 

Linking 8 the book of Hebrews the connecting link between 
Dispensa- the old and the new dispensation; and this book 
reveals throughout the universal character of 
revelation. "God having of old time spoken 
unto the fathers in the prophets by divers por- 
tions and in divers manners, hath at the end of 
these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he 
appointed heir of all things, through whom also 
he made the worlds." The author of the book 
of Hebrews thus presents Christ, not simply as 
the creator of the earth, but as the maker of all 
worlds. The writer then portrays God as making 
provision for a universal redemption, not a re- 
demption limited to the Jews: "Since then the 
children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also 
himself in like manner partook of the same ; that 
through death he might bring to nought him 
that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 
and might deliver all them who through fear of 
death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." 
Surely the possession of flesh and blood and the 
fear of death are not limited to the Jews, and the 
whole passage becomes absurd if we suppose the 

58 



The New Testament and Missions 59 

deliverance promised is limited to the inhabitants 
of Palestine. Chapter seven of Hebrews sweeps 
purposely beyond Judaism and reveals the priest- 
hood of Melchizedek as existing outside of the 
Jewish nation and yet as ordained by the most 
high God. Finally we have in the list of the 
worthies who obtained salvation by faith, the 
names of Gentiles like Rahab included among 
the Jews. 

The higher critics represent the apostle Peter Peter's 
as the most Jewish writer of the New Testament. Message 
But you will recall that people of all nations lis- 
tened to Peter's sermon on the Day of Pentecost, 
and he offered them all salvation through repent- 
ance and faith in Jesus Christ. The enumeration : 
"Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the 
dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappado- 
cia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pam- 
phylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about 
Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews 
and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians/' who 
heard Peter in their own tongues speak of the 
mighty works of God, stamps the first sermon 
preached after the ascension of Christ as a mis- 
sionary message. In order that we might not 
by any possibility suppose that the inhabitants 
of these nations are simply people of Hebrew 
blood returning to their native land, the Holy 
Spirit added the phrase, "J ews an d proselytes/' 



60 God's Missionary Plan 

namely, those who were not Jews by birth, but 
who like Ruth had risen above their heathen en- 
vironment and had learned to worship the true 
God. Again, because Peter later wavered in 
special regard to the salvation of the Gentiles, a special 

he'waveTed 11 m i rac l e was wrought in the sheet let down from 
heaven containing all manner of beasts followed 
by the divine interpretation of the sign and the 
call of Peter formally to baptize a Gentile and 
receive Cornelius into the church. How clearly 
Peter sees the meaning of the message and 
the missionary character of this call is seen 
in his exclamation: "Of a truth I perceive that 
God is no respecter of persons: but in every 
nation he that feareth him and worketh right- 
eousness is acceptable to him." When Peter 
addressed his second letter "to them that have 
obtained a like precious faith with us in the 
righteousness of our God and the Saviour Jesus 
Christ/' knowing full well that under his own 
preaching Cornelius, and many Gentiles on 
the Day of Pentecost had become believers; 
when he urges the Christians to maintain their 
"behavior seemly among the Gentiles; that, 
wherein they speak against you as evil-doers, 
they may by your good works, which they be- 
hold, glorify God in the day of visitation," 
we see that the missionary character of the 
Bible runs through the warp and woof of Peter's 



Religion 



The New Testament and Missions 61 

teaching as well as through the book of 
Hebrews. 

Paul shows most clearly the transition from Paul's vision 
the Pharisaic ideal to the Christian ideal of the 
evangelization of the race. He says that he was 
a Pharisee of the Pharisees. The Protestant 
church has laid not only large but almost exclu- 
sive stress upon Paul's doctrine of justification 
by faith. That was perhaps the chief part, but 
it was only one part of the two-fold revelation 
which accompanied Paul's conversion. The 
other part leading to the transformation of Paul 
from a Pharisee into a missionary constituted 
an essential element in his conversion. During 
his three years' study in Arabia of the Law and 
the Prophets in the light of Christ Paul saw that 
Christianity not only regenerated the whole man 
as the Law could never do, but that it embraced 
the whole race, as Pharisaism never conceived. 
Paul now saw in the downfall of Judaism and 
the collapse of the Asmonean movement, not a 
failure of the divine promises, not an abandon- 
ment of the divine program, but only an appli- 
cation to the Jews of those laws which the God 
of all the earth had ordained for the government 
of all his children; Paul now realized that the 
election of the Jews was a divine call and a divine 
preparation for the providential service of the 
race; Paul now caught a vision of Judaism ex- 



62 God's Missionary Plan 

panding into a universal religion and of an infi- 
nitely larger destiny for his native people than 
he had ever dreamed of as a Pharisee. He sums 
up this nobler conception of the divine program, 
which embraces not only the Jews, but all the 
families of the earth, in the following inspired 
words: "The God that made the world and all 
things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and 
earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; 
neither is he served by men's hands, as though 
he needed anything, seeing he himself giveth to 
all life, and breath, and all things ; and he made 
of one every nation of men to dwell on all the 
face of the earth, having determined their ap- 
pointed seasons, and the bounds of their habita- 
tion; that they should seek God, if haply they 
might feel after him and find him, though he is 
not far from each one of us : for in him we live 
and move and have our being." Here in one of 
the noblest utterances of the Bible, in a divine 
a Philosophy expression of the philosophy of history, we see 
of History p a ul rising infinitely above Pharisaism and be- 
coming the evangelist of the nations. The 
church of the Reformation in the sixteenth 
century wisely emphasized that side of Paul's 
conversion called justification by faith; the mis- 
sionary church of the twentieth century with 
equal wisdom will lay the predominant emphasis 
upon the equally profound change which trans- 



The New Testament and Missions 63 

formed Saul the Pharisee into Paul the mis- 
sionary. 

John was such a bigoted Pharisee that when John's Trans 

■ «••«<•« i« 1 • formation of 

he met a disciple of the Master who was casting view 
out devils in Christ's name he forbade him, be- 
cause he followed not the other disciples. Even 
when the Master was on the final journey to 
Jerusalem for the crucifixion and certain Samari- 
tans forbade him to enter their village, John 
started to call down fire from heaven to consume 
them. Well was he named the Son of Thunder. 
But before John was called to write the book of 
Revelation he had caught the world-wide outlook 
for the Gospel and he writes : "Worthy art thou 
to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: 
for thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God 
with thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, 
and people, and nation" ; and at the close of the 
book he sees the vision of the kings of the earth 
bringing their glory into the new Jerusalem, and 
of the nations walking in the light of the glory 
of God. Moreover, fifty years of Christian ex- 
perience under the lead of the Holy Spirit 
brought John to a position so infinitely in advance 
of Pharisaism that in the very prologue of his 
Gospel he announces Christ as "the true light, 
even the light which lighteth every man, coming 
into the world" ; and he alone of the disciples re- 
calls John the Baptist's inspired description of the 



64 God's Missionary Plan 

Master : "Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh 
away the sin of the world !" 
Christ the Jesus Christ is the supreme representative of 
Miss^onar ^e m i ss i° nar y conception of the New Testament. 
Only on the hypothesis of the offer of salvation 
to all men and of Christ's purpose that the Gospel 
should be preached to all the world can the 
words and acts of Jesus be understood. He 
called himself the Son of man, and refused the 
Jewish title of Messiah until his break with the 
Pharisees robbed this divine title of all taint of 
Jewish exclusiveness. He announced his mission 
in the words, "The Son of man came to seek 
and to save that which was lost." If the Jews 
admitted themselves to be the only persons lost 
through sin, they could claim Jesus as their ex- 
clusive Saviour. But if all men are lost through 
sin, then Jesus came to save all. The first words 
of the Lord's prayer, "Our Father," teach the 
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. 
The petition, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be 
done, as in heaven, so on earth," cannot be 
uttered by anyone who expects the kingdom to 
be limited to any single race. A child cannot 
learn the Lord's prayer without becoming an 
incipient missionary, 
wide Mean- Every parable Jesus spoke, every principle he 

ingofPara- . J % . r J . \ ' / r XT r 

bie and enunciated, is of universal application. How can 

principle one interpret the parables of the Lost Piece of 



Alone 



The New Testament and Missions 65 

Money or of the Lost Sheep, over which the 
shepherd rejoices more than over the ninety and 
nine who went not astray, and yet limit the teach- 
ing of Jesus to the Jews alone? Such a limitation Not for jews 
is a contradiction of these parables. The Para- 
ble of the Great Supper teaches the call of 
nations in the highways and the hedges as 
well as of individuals. The Parable of the 
Prodigal Son is spoken especially to warn the 
Jews that the Gentiles may yet return to God 
and find a welcome home. It is true that Jesus 
said to the Syrophoenician woman, "I was not sent 
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. " 
But the glad leap of his heart at her persistence 
shows that he said it only to deepen her faith. 
"O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto 
thee even as thou wilt." Jesus's recognition of 
the centurion's faith, and his declaration, "Many 
shall come from the east and the west, and shall 
sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, 
in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the 
kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer dark- 
ness," awakened the antagonism of the Pharisees. 
They saw at once that Jesus was denying their 
exclusive privileges and was opening the king- 
dom to all men. The Parable of the Laborers in 
the Vineyard applies to nations as well as to indi- 
viduals. The Jews as the theocratic nation had 
borne the burden and heat of the day. In this 



66 



God's Missionary Plan 



Last 

Commission 

Crowns 

Other 

Teachings 



parable Jesus teaches that nations, which had 
apparently done nothing for the kingdom but 
had been waiting during the centuries for their 
appointed tasks, were to be given an equal oppor- 
tunity with the Jews. 

Jesus does not leave us to inferences drawn 
from the study of his parables. He plainly 
says to Nicodemus: "God so loved the world, 
that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoso- 
ever believeth on him should not perish, but have 
eternal life." It is the "whosoevers" which run 
like a golden thread through the New Testa- 
ment; it is such promises as "Ask and ye shall 
receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall 
be opened unto you"; it is such passages as we 
find in the Lord's Prayer, and such testimonies 
as are borne by John the Baptist and John the be- 
loved disciple to Jesus as the lamb of God who 
taketh away the sins of the world; it is Jesus's 
declaration that all the nations of the earth shall 
be called before him for final judgment, which 
makes Christianity the religion of the race and 
our preaching necessarily missionary. Thus a 
candid study of the Gospels compels the mission- 
ary interpretation of the teachings of Jesus in- 
dependently of the last commission, and such a 
study makes that last commission, so frequently 
quoted as the only authority for missions, "Go 
ye into all the world and make disciples of all the 



The New Testament and Missions 67 

nations," the only logical or possible conclusion 
of the teachings of the Master. 

Indeed, we may say that Jesus suffered death Jesus's Death 
rather than abandon his missionary ideal. When M^ionary 
Pilate asked him if he was a king, Jesus used the ideal 
strongest affirmative in answering : "Thou sayest 
that I am a king. . . . Every one that is of the 
truth heareth my voice." The Jews would have 
died for him in order to enable him to make good 
his claim of kingship in their sense of the word 
and thus to establish their supremacy over the 
Romans. Gladly would they have given their 
lives in a struggle under his leadership for the 
rulership of all the nations. But when Jesus in- 
terpreted kingship in its divine sense, and sum- 
moned them to serve rather than to rule, and to 
serve all men rather than the Jews alone, the 
break between the Pharisaic party and Jesus be- 
came inevitable. Surely with the marvelous in- 
sight into character and motives which Jesus 
showed throughout his public life, he must have 
seen that he could avoid death at the hands of 
his fellow countrymen if he would abandon his 
ideal. That ideal was rulership through service 
rather than through divine prerogative, and that 
service was the service of the race rather than 
of the Jews alone. Jesus's plan of life is as clearly 
violated by the American who says, "Christ is 
for the Anglo-Saxons and Confucius for the 



68 God's Missionary Plan 

Chinese/' as it was contradicted by the Jews. 
Jesus's ideal is as certainly lowered by the Eng- 
lish Christian who says, "My service and money 
are for England/' as by the Pharisee who said, 
"My duty and devotion are to Palestine/' It is 
at least significant that Jesus preferred death to 
the acceptance at the hands of the Jews of the 
identical program which the opponents of modern 
missions mark out for him. 
The The whole trend of history is toward the em- 

of History bodiment of the missionary ideal. In ancient 
history, conquest was the vice of nations, tyranny 
the vice of monarchs, slavery the vice of families. 
Modern nations are moving toward democracy. 
Mr. Stead, in The Americanization of the 
World, has pointed out the fact that representa- 
tive government has been adopted during the 
nineteenth century by every nation of Europe 
save Russia, and by every nation in South Amer- 
ica. Russia and China are now entering upon 
the transition from autocratic to representative 
institutions. Equal opportunities for all men is 
the ideal toward which modern civilization is 
tending. Equal opportunities in business is the 
goal toward which the struggle between labor 
and capital is slowly moving. The dishonor with 
which a rich man who leaves nothing for the 
public welfare sinks into his grave, the very sav- 
agery with which the greed of the rich man is 



The New Testament and Missions 69 

criticized today, is due to the fact that modern 
civilization is moving swiftly toward the ideal of 
service rather than of selfishness ; and the strug- 
gle for world-wide federations of labor, the 
growth of the Hague tribunal, the formation of 
international alliances, show that men and na- 
tions alike are acquiring the world outlook. In 
a word, the whole trend of modern industrial and 
political history is becoming missionary in its 
character. This is brought out clearly in Pro- 
fessor Stevenson's brilliant book, The Mission- 
ary Interpretation of History. 

If we are right in our interpretation of the Missions the 
restless struggles of our times, and of the Bible, Purpose of the 
then missions are not a department of church church 
activity, the evangelization of the world is not 
one of the varied functions of the church to be 
fulfilled by an annual collection put upon the 
same plane with a dozen others ; it is the goal of 
all church labor, it is the end for which the 
Christian church exists. Mr. Gladstone was 
right in saying, "The missionary problem is the 
one great question of the age." The Anglican 
and Protestant Episcopal Bishops in that great 
Lambeth Conference were right in declaring: 
"Missions constitute the primary work for which 
the church was commissioned by our Lord." 
The Presbyterian Church voiced the ideal of 
Christendom in the declaration, "The Presby- 



Jo God's Missionary Plan, 

terian Church is a missionary society whose chief 
business is the propagation of the Gospel to the 
uttermost parts of the earth/' God helped John 
Wesley in saying, "The world is my parish." 
Thoughts jj. j s b ecause missionaries are engaged in world 

Imperial ° ° 

in their conquests that their thoughts have an imperial 
sweep sweep. It is because they are working in the 
line of the divine providence that their language 
is optimistic, that their plans have the strength 
of the ages in them, and their lives have the 
peace and the power of God. They stand on the 
Bible's opening revelation of God's creatorship 
of all men, and they are bringing the prodigal 
nations back to the Father's house. They 
are true sons of Abraham in whom God is ful- 
filling the promise of the covenant : "And in thy 
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." 
They are bringing in the everlasting triumph of 
that Messiah of whom the prophets spoke and 
psalmists sang. They are spiritual brothers and 
sisters of Peter and Paul who, for the spread of 
the kingdom, poured out their blood in foreign 
lands. They are following in the footsteps of 
Jesus Christ, who was an only Son, and yet be- 
came a foreign missionary. And so the mission- 
aries in India, and China, and Japan, and Africa, 
are summoning the nations of the earth to join in 
worshiping one "God and Father of all, who is 
over all, and through all, and in all." 



CHAPTER V 
The Divine Method of Securing Power 
Thus far we have considered the Divine Pur- T he Q uestion 

of Power 

pose, the Divine Plan of Procedure, the Old 
Testament and Missions, and the New Testa- 
ment and Missions. The basis for the evangeliza- 
tion of the race is the divine purpose "in the full- 
ness of the times to sum up all things in Christ. ,, 
The motive for missions is the cross of Christ; 
and the cross has a twofold significance for the 
evangelization of the race: First, "Beloved, if 
God so loved us, we ought also to love one an- 
other." Second, if Jesus Christ tasted of death 
for every man, if all our brothers and sisters 
throughout the earth are redeemed by the cross, 
surely we ought to let each one know of a re- 
demption purchased at so great a cost. But the 
weightiest question yet awaits us, namely, How 
may the church at home and the missionaries 
upon the field gain the power to evangelize and 
Christianize the race? 

A study of the divine commission to evangelize Pled s e and 
the world shows clearly that it opens with a 
pledge of power: "All authority is given unto 
me in heaven and in earth." Then follows the 
command to baptize all nations and teach them 

7i 



72 God's Missionary Plan; 

to observe all that Jesus has commanded us. And 
this is followed by the still grander promise that 
the divine Presence and Power are to accompany 
us in our task : "And lo, I am with you always, 
even unto the end of the world." 
For Evangel- ^ stu d y of this divine promise will show that 

ization .. . .. F 

it is a divine provision made for the evangeliza- 
tion of the race. A careful study of the condi- 
tions on the field forces us to recognize that the 
missionaries themselves often lack the power of 
perfect self-control and perfect self-denial. They 
are human and frail and sometimes sinful, as are 
Christians at home. Above all, they often lack 
the faith and power to bring to a new birth in 
Christ those for whom they are travailing in 
spirit. Surely, therefore, there is need on the 
foreign field for the realization of the divine 
promise: "And lo, I am with you always, even 
unto the end of the world." 
For While this promise may seem to be limited to 

missionaries on the field, we are sure that evan- 
gelization is never separated in the divine mind 
from Christianization. Both are included in the 
divine purpose to sum up all things in Christ.- 
Hence the promise is as available for home as for 
foreign use. Besides, the Bible is full of prom- 
ises of similar import which no one would dream 
of limiting to missionaries. "If any man lack 
wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all 



Christianiza- 
tion 



The Divine Method of Securing Power j$ 

men liberally and upbraideth not." "Come unto 
me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest." "My grace shall be suffi- 
cient for you." "Ye shall receive power after 
that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." Here 
are promises of wisdom, of peace, of grace, and 
of power for all Christians. 

But will not an open-minded reading of the The 
New Testament, upon the one side, and a candid fthe s^ir™ 
examination of our own lives on the other, con- 
vince most of us at least that we are still 
strangers to many of the most precious promises 
of God, that for some cause or other we have 
not realized these pledges of wisdom and grace 
and power so freely made to us by our heavenly 
Father? I believe this is because we have not 
entered fully upon, perhaps have not fully real- 
ized the existence of, the dispensation of the 
Spirit. 

The most casual reader recognizes the twofold Relation of 

. ^ Law, Gospel, 

division of the Bible into Old and New Testa- spirit 
ments. A careful reading of the Bible leads me 
to the conviction that there are not two, but three 
fundamental divisions in the volume as a whole. 
There is the dispensation of Law, the dispensation 
of the Gospel, and the dispensation of the Spirit. 
One must not infer from this statement that there 
are three revelations any more than he infers 
from the Christian doctrine of the Trinity that 



and 
Fulfilling 



74 God's Missionary Plan 

there are three Gods. Jesus Christ came to 
enable the human race more fully than ever be- 
fore to fulfill all the law and the prophets, and 
he is thus the culmination of the dispensation of 
the Law. So also the Holy Spirit was given that 
he might complete the dispensation of the Son. 
"But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the 
Foretelling Father will send in my name, he shall teach you 
all things, and bring to your remembrance all 
that I said unto you." In return both the dis- 
pensation of the Law and of the Gospel foretell the 
dispensation of the Spirit as the age in which 
they shall find their embodiment and realization. 
"And it shall come to pass afterward that I will 
pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; . . . And 
it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call 
on the name of Jehovah shall be delivered." 
"And I will give them a heart to know me, that 
I am Jehovah: and they shall be my people and 
I will be their God; for they shall return unto 
me with their whole heart." These are Old 
Testament visions of the dispensation of the 
Spirit. Jesus calls the disciples' attention to 
these prophecies before leaving them; and he 
breathed upon them and said: "Receive ye the 
Holy Ghost"; he also urged them to tarry at 
Jerusalem "until ye be endued with power from 
on high"; he also promised them, "Ye shall re- 
ceive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon 



The Divine Method of Securing Power 75 

you." These are the Gospel previsions of the 
dispensation of the Spirit. Thus each succeed- 
ing dispensation simply enables us to fulfill more 
perfectly the preceding dispensation. So far from 
rivalry and conflict existing between these three 
dispensations, they consist, or stand together, as 
the divine revelation. 

Some of our readers are familiar with Less- steps by 
ing's Study of Human Nature. First, is the External* 
dispensation of childhood or infancy, in which obedience 
external obedience to concrete commands be- 
comes the law of life. A mother cannot explain 
to the babe the nature of fire or the delicacy of 
the human nerves. She simply says to the child, 
grasping at the candle or the lamp, "No, No," 
and secures obedience by punishment, if need 
be. The father cannot explain to the little son 
that the family has suffered from tuberculosis 
and that he must be especially careful of exposure 
to wet and cold. He simply must give the com- 
mand and insist upon obedience to it in the child's 
early life. In a word, the child's salvation — 
physical, mental, and moral — depends at first 
upon obedience to external commands. The 
child lives in the age of embodied law ; it passes 
through the legal dispensation. The father and 
mother stand in the place of divine authority for 
the child. 

Soon, however, the child enters the stage of 



j6 God's Missionary Plan 

imitation imitation. It learns the speech in which its father 
and mother address it. It often imitates the very 
tones and gestures of those whom it admires. 
The lad is now influenced more largely by the 
example of the father and mother and of older 
companions than by the precepts which they 
utter in his hearing. As he advances in his edu- 
cation the boy begins to read fiction ; he becomes 
a hero worshiper, and the follower of some leader 
in politics or in religion. Virtue appeals to him 
now, not through the precepts of his mother, 
but as embodied in some heroine whom he cher- 
ishes in his heart. It is the age of imitation, the 
age of hero worship. Happy are those parents 
whose children make the father the hero and 
the mother the heroine of their early lives. Happy 
are those parents whose children in their com- 
panions and in their reading come in contact 
with the noblest ideals, and through books and 
society are helped to higher and completer living. 
Participation; There comes a period later in which the young 
ofPrec^T geS man outgrows blind partisanship and hero wor- 
Exampie, ship. He begins to master the principles which 
nncip e underlie parties and great movements in history. 
Now, if ever, he becomes the spiritual son of his 
father. If the father's life has been the embodi- 
ment of certain great principles and the son 
comes to understand those principles and to ap- 
preciate them and to accept them as his own, he 



The Divine Method of Securing Power yy 

now becomes a real companion of the father and 
fellow laborer with him in the same great battle 
for reform in politics, for the renovation of so- 
cial life, for the redemption of humanity through 
Jesus Christ. The stage of Precept, the stage of 
Example, the stage of Principle, are the three 
stages portrayed by Lessing in his study of hu- 
man nature. Suggestive as is Lessing's illustra- 
tion, it fails through representing Christ simply 
as an example and the Holy Spirit as an inward 
principle; whereas the deepest fact of human 
nature is its capacity for God. In him we live 
and move and have our being. Christ is the life 
as well as the light of men. The indwelling of 
the Spirit is our source of power. 

The great problem in Christianity, as in all chasm 
religions, is cleansing from past sins and the i/J^and 
closing of the chasm between one's ideals and conduct 
his daily life. How shall we secure spiritual 
peace and make the principles which our books 
of religion enjoin actually mold and shape our 
daily conduct? If the Buddhists or Confucian- 
ists or the Mohammedans could perfectly embody 
in their daily lives the good precepts which even 
their religious literatures enjoin, the civilization 
of such people would surpass that of many 
Christian nations. Unfortunately these religions 
reveal no way of cleansing the soul from sin or 
of renewing it in righteousness. Sad to relate 



78 God's Missionary Plan 

even Christian nations have not thus far per- 
fectly realized the ideals of the New Testament. 
Upon the contrary, our so-called Christian civil- 
ization, with the ambitions and lusts and selfish- 
ness which characterize our lives, is a travesty 
upon the purity and peace and love preached by 
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Where is 
the power to come from which shall enable the 
so-called Christian nations, or even those indi- 
viduals who profess the religion of Jesus Christ 
and are gathered into church membership, to 
realize their ideals ? This is the greatest problem 
which confronts us in the evangelization and 
especially in the Christianization of the race. 

provision of Turning to the Bible, we find the exact provi- 
Power r Tt . . « ■ r i 

through the sion for this power in the dispensation of the 
spirit Spirit. See how the Bible leads up to this dis- 

pensation of the Spirit. The Old Testament 
everywhere presents us God as the God of the 
universe and demands obedience to God's laws 
as the condition of personal and national salva- 
tion and prosperity. This is the substance of the 
Old Testament. Jesus Christ takes up the same 
problem and the New Testament reiterates in 
the fullest manner the necessity of obedience 
to the divine laws : "Be not deceived ; God is not 
mocked ; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he also reap. He that soweth to the flesh shall 
of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth 



The Divine Method of Securing Power 79 

to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlast- 
ing." But Jesus knew that we had all broken 
the law, that human nature is corrupt, and that 
every human being falls into condemnation 
through first indulging in personal sin. Worse 
still, Jesus knows that practically each one of us 
as a sinner has fallen into bondage to satan. 
"For our wrestling is not with flesh and blood; 
but against the principalities, against the pow r ers, 
against the world rulers of this darkness." 
Hence Jesus died to redeem us from the guilt 
and power of sin, to summon us by his cross to 
break our connection with satan, and to enter 
into union with himself. This is the substance 
of the Gospel. But where is the power to come 
from which will enable us to respond to the sum- The Summons 
mons of the Cross, w-hich will give us power to 
repent or break with satan and come to Christ. 
to abide in him, and to fulfill his will? Clearly 
this is promised, not through the bodily presence 
of Jesus, which at best would be external to our 
spirits; but through the Holy Spirit which he 
promised to shed forth upon us after his ascen- 
sion. Hence it was expedient for us that he 
should disappear as an external companion that 
he might reappear as an inward power. Just 
so far as any person fails to respond to the will of 
Christ, the failure is due to his lack of the pen- 
tecostal power which the New Testament prom- 



of the Cross 



Pentecost 
Opening a 



80 God's Missionary Plan 

ises to all of us. "But ye shall receive power, 
when the Holy Spirit is come upon you/' Here, 
then, in the mind of Jesus was a distinct pro- 
vision for the power which would enable indi- 
viduals to abandon known sins and to fulfill 
known duties, and which would enable the Chris- 
tian church to evangelize the race and to 
Christianize earthly institutions and transform 
the civilization of the world. 

But one says : Was not the Holy Spirit in the 
New Em world before the Day of Pentecost? Certainly 
he was, just as Jesus was in the world before his 
advent. John declares that Jesus was the true 
light which lighteth every man coming into the 
world. So even Genesis speaks of the Spirit of 
God moving upon the face of the waters, and of 
God breathing into man the breath of life and 
man becoming a living soul. But although Jesus 
was in the world from the beginning, the world 
knew him not, and it is appropriate for us to 
designate the incarnation of Jesus in a human 
body as the advent of the Messiah. So although 
the Holy Spirit has been in the world from the 
beginning of creation, it is also appropriate for 
us to characterize the Day of Pentecost as the 
advent of the Holy Spirit. Electricity has been 
in the world since creation; but man had not 
realized its presence or its power or learned 
how to use it until the present age. Hence the 



The Divine Method of Securing Power 81 

present age may be fitly called the age of electric- 
ity. In the same manner the age succeeding the 
ascension of Christ and inaugurated by Pente- 
cost naturally may be called the dispensation of 
the Spirit. Modern science has revealed to us 
larger and larger manifestations of electrical 
power; it has given us control more and more 
perfectly of the energy of the physical universe. 
Surely Christ has for those who believe in him 
equal manifestations of energy, corresponding to 
these revelations of power found in the physical 
universe. "Ye shall receive power when the 
Holy Spirit is come upon you." 

The dispensation of the Spirit makes clear to Natural and 

Supernatural 

us the puzzle between the natural and the super- 
natural. Every act is natural from the point of 
view of the kingdom in which it belongs ; super- 
natural from the point of view of any kingdom 
below that. The law of gravitation holds in the 
mineral kingdom. But when we pass from the 
mineral to the vegetable kingdom, we find trees 
and vegetation growing upward, lifting immense 
weights of vegetable matter varying distances 
from the earth every summer. Doubtless if the 
pebbles in the pathway could think and speak, 
they would regard as incredible the overcoming 
of the law of gravitation in the vegetable world. 
The law of gravitation is not violated or sus- 
pended in the vegetable kingdom. The moment 



82 God's Missionary Plan 

the trunk of the tree is severed, gravitation brings 
it to the earth; the law of gravitation is simply 
overcome by the higher law of vegetable life. So 
when we pass from the vegetable to the animal 
kingdom, we have a still higher manifestation of 
power by which the animals move freely about 
upon the earth, or the fish swim at will in the 
waters, or the birds fly through the air. Doubt- 
less if the vegetables could speak, they would 
regard these manifestations as miraculous. But 
while from the point of view of the vegetable 
this is miraculous, it is perfectly natural upon the 
animal plane. So as we pass from the animal 
to the human kingdom, we find the use of steam 
or electricity supernatural from the point of view 
of the animals, but entirely natural from the point 
of view of modern science. If, therefore, there 
is a spiritual kingdom higher than the human 
kingdom; if Jesus Christ really inaugurated the 
kingdom of heaven upon earth, certainly there 
would be manifestations in that kingdom which 
a Place would seem miraculous and incredible to men 

frit* T\AlT*S>fM fift 

living on the lower and purely human plane. 
But these miracles, so far from being a stumbling 
block to real faith, are simply the manifestations 
of the presence of the higher kingdom inaugu- 
rated by Jesus Christ. "If I do not the works of 
my Father, believe me not. But if I do them, 
though ye believe not me, believe the works : that 



The Divine Method of Securing Power 83 

ye may know and understand that the Father is 
in me, and I in the Father." That is, if we are 
disposed to doubt whether he is the representa- 
tive of the God of the universe, whether he has 
really founded a new kingdom, witness the mani- 
festation of power in the miracles of Jesus Christ. 

I think most persons who study closely the Wesley's 
spiritual experience of John Wesley will be con- Power 
vinced that Wesley was a saved man, and indeed 
that so far as his will power could go, he was a 
consecrated man when he was a missionary in 
Georgia. But as a missionary he was conscious 
of a great lack of power to bring either the 
Indians, Negroes, or the white people to the 
cross of Christ. John Wesley in the Moravian 
Chapel in London, after his failure in and re- 
turn from Georgia, certainly received some 
strange baptism of divine peace and power. So 
deep was the impression made on Wesley's own 
mind by the experience through which he passed 
that from 1738 until his death he taught that 
God's call to the people called Methodists is 
to bear witness to the presence of the Spirit 
in their hearts, and to spread scriptural holiness 
over the earth. We need not distrust Wesley's 
baptism by the Spirit at that time and of his 
maintenance of the Spirit's presence and power 
from that time on because he says so little about 
his own sanctification and personal holiness. 



§4 God's Missionary Plan 

Christian perfection is always accompanied by 
humility. At any rate, in Wesley we are con- 
fronted with the phenomenon of a man becoming 
conscious of the Holy Spirit's witness to his sal- 
vation and with the inflowing and abiding of a 
divine power which helped him in some measure 
to transform Protestant Christendom. Let us 
have enough self-respect and enough confidence 
in God to believe that all men may be equally the 
recipients of his bounty, and that whether we 
have the call to or the gifts for the same work 
which Wesley did, we have the call to similar 
consecration and may have a similar blessing 
from God upon the same conditions as those upon 
which Wesley received it. 
spiritual Indeed, there are tens of thousands of all 

Efficiency . 

for aii ages and nations and churches of whom Thomas 
a Kempis and Madame Guyon and Fletcher and 
Payson and Finney are types whose experiences 
were as marked and whose victories were as 
great as Wesley's. This claim of the Gospel is 
open to the scientific test of experiment. "Oh, 
taste and see that Jehovah is good." If we will 
fulfill the New Testament conditions, we shall 
receive peace and guidance and power. We our- 
selves shall be conscious of the inward peace. 
The world which observes us will feel that we 
have some strange spiritual power bordering on 
the supernatural to them, though we know that 



The Divine Method of Securing Power 85 

such power may be possessed by all alike on the 
same conditions. The skepticism of the world in 
the presence of the church is due half to the 
blindness of unbelief and half to the unfaithful- 
ness of Christians. I do not think that we may 
claim power to work physical miracles. Jesus 
himself furnished physical miracles only as 
crutches on which a lame faith could walk to 
him for strength ; and as in the case of Thomas, 
he deprecated their necessity. Nor may we ex- 
pect the power to repeat the achievements of 
Paul or Luther. Every man's life is a plan of Every Life a 
God, and not a mere copy of some former life. 
The bird flies and the fish swims equally by the 
power of God; but it does not follow that the 
fish can fly and the bird swim. So you may not 
invade all Europe with your faith, as did Paul, 
for that task has already been accomplished. But 
you may as certainly receive divine power to do 
the work God calls you to perform as Paul re- 
ceived power to discharge his heaven given 
tasks. Phillips Brooks says: "God gives us 
tasks, not according to our strength; he sum- 
mons us to tasks infinitely beyond our power: 
he summons us to tasks according to our strength 
reinforced by the Holy Spirit." Paul found 
the secret of achievement when he wrote: 
"I can do all things in him that strengthened 
me. 



86 God's Missionary Plan 

Enlargement Perhaps their isolation and the appalling tasks 
Missionary which confront them have led the missionaries 
Tasks to f u ifiii the conditions and to secure the peace 

and guidance and power of the Holy Spirit more 
fully than most people in the home lands. One 
of Wesley's followers, David Hill, was helped 
by the Spirit to a life of such consecration that 
he became known either personally or by report 
as an angel of mercy to several million Chinese. 
Hill and Richards and Nevius distributed some 
fifty thousand ounces of silver at the time of the 
great Shansi famine. And the non-Christian 
Chinese erected a monument in their own pic- 
turesque language : "Everlastingly to hand down 
their names to a thousand ages." 
Complete Th e fundamental condition for the reception 

Receptiveness of the Holy Spirit is the repentance of all sins 
which we are still indulging, constant humility 
enabling us to recognize that the power by which 
we walk is not inherent in ourselves but a gift 
flowing moment by moment from the Divine into 
our own lives, and perfect obedience to the Holy 
Spirit as he reveals himself in our hearts. His 
coming depends upon our cultivation of the di- 
vine presence, our living in a constant atmosphere 
of prayer, our holding fast despite all discour- 
agements to a constant expectation and assurance 
of his presence. Upon the one side, I think we 
must recognize that our Christian civilization, 



The Divine Method of Securing Power 87 

imperfect as it is, is almost infinitely higher in its 
morality, in its charity, in its mercy, in its 
power to alleviate suffering, in its revelation of 
the presence of God upon earth, than the civiliza- 
tion of the Hindoos, of Mohammedans, or of the 
Chinese. On the other hand, we must also recog- 
nize that great multitudes in all our Christian 
churches have not so much power as is prom- 
ised in the New Testament. For one, I contend 
that some power is possible for us all ; that if the 
members of the Christian church make a full 
surrender of every known sin; if they stand be- 
fore God with open minds and open hearts, ready 
to receive the power which he is willing to 
bestow; if, on the reception of this power, they 
continue to walk before him in perfect obedience, 
not exalting themselves above their brethren, as The Essence 
has been the danger with some ; and if, above all, 
they continue in perfect obedience day by day, 
they may expect a continuance of this power. 
The experience of sanctification is not such a 
transformation of nature as renders one imper- 
vious to temptation and makes further transgres- 
sion impossible. It is such a condition of 
continual prayer, of openness of heart, of mod- 
esty of spirit, of obedience of will, and of grati- 
tude for divine favors, as secures the constant 
inpouring of the divine life. "It is no longer I 
that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life 



of Sanctifica- 
tion 



88 God's Missionary Plan 

which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the 
faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, 
and gave himself up for me." 
The Present \y e m ust not speak of the present age as dis- 
Dispensation tinctly the age of the Spirit. Just as Jesus came 
to fulfill the Law more perfectly than it had 
been fulfilled; just as the Gospel flourished only 
by perfectly fulfilling the outward laws through 
embodying the law of God in the heart of the 
disciples, so the dispensation of the Spirit is not 
a third dispensation, distinct from the dispensa- 
tion of the Gospel or of the Law. Rather it is 
the rounding out and completion of the former 
two. We live, therefore, in such a dispensation 
of the Law and such a dispensation of the Gospel 
as the Jews and the disciples of Jesus never real- 
ized. The modern world has realized as the 
Jews never did that we are in a universe of law, 
and that only by obedience to the law is physical 
or mental or spiritual salvation possible. Those 
who enter most fully into the dispensation of the 
Spirit realize as the disciples never realized the 
possibilities of union with Christ. Indeed, the 
Master walks with them on earth, lives with them 
in their hearts, speaks with them through their 
lips, and works through their lives accomplishing 
results which to the unbeliever seem super- 
natural. In a word, therefore, this dispensation 
is not the dispensation of the Spirit chiefly or 



The Divine Method of Securing Power 89 

solely; it is the dispensation of the Father, the 
dispensation of the Son, and the dispensation of 
the Holy Spirit. 

Summing up the argument of the chapter, the Adequate 
evangelization and Christianization of the world Resources 
demand more wisdom and grace and power than 
any of us is conscious of possessing. But just 
as science has revealed to us and given us posses- 
sion of powers in the physical universe of which 
we little dreamed, so the New Testament reveals 
in the dispensation of the Spirit the presence and 
the power of God on earth. While the tasks set 
before us are finite, the resources are infinite. 
"Even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, 
that they also may be in us : that the world may 
believe that thou didst send me." 



CHAPTER VI 
The Divine Method of Securing Workers 
Life under The divine method of securing workers for 
Direction ^ e f° re ig" n field as f° r the home field is through 
the union of each individual soul with Jesus 
Christ. "Every Man's Life a Plan of God" was 
the title of the most inspiring message which 
one of our great modern preachers ever pro- 
claimed. God respects our individuality; he has 
created each one of us for some particular work 
in his universe and no man or angel can quite 
take our place. Back of all special calls to the 
ministry there is the divine revelation that we 
all, men and women, ministers and laymen, are 
workers together with God, that God has a par- 
ticular work for each one of us to do, that he is 
willing to help us through the use of all human 
and divine agencies in finding that work, and 
that he is ready to reinforce our limited wisdom 
and strength with his infinite resources in the 
accomplishment of our task. We are all sure 
that those whom God calls to the ministry have 
a specific, divine call to that work. The later 
and broader interpreters of the Bible maintain 
that all God's children may have divine direction 
in choosing their life work and in carrying it to 

90 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 91 

a successful conclusion. Saint John teaches that 
each one of us belongs to the kingdom of the 
priesthood. "Unto him that loved us, and loosed 
us from our sins by his blood; and he made us 
to be a kingdom of priests unto his God and 
Father/' This is the inspiring thought which the 
Bible presents to young people today as they 
stand at the threshold of life. 

Upon the other side, these great privileges workers 
bring their corresponding responsibilities. There w °fhGod 
can be no successful work at home or abroad, 
in the ministry or in so-called secular work, 
unless the Christian feels that he is working to- 
gether with God. 

Mr. Robert E. Speer is one of the missionary The 

. Missionary 

statesmen of our age. But I do not quite accept commission 
what I understand him to teach, namely, that the is collective 
command to go to the foreign field is as universal 
in its application as the command to love one's 
neighbor. The two commands are equally uni- 
versal, but not equally particular. The command 
to love one's neighbor is addressed to every hu- 
man being, and no one can excuse himself in 
the sight of God from observing it. But Christ's 
last command to evangelize the world seems to 
me rather to have been addressed to the disciples 
in their collective capacity; it was not obeyed 
literally by each individual disciple. To hold 
that "beginning at Jerusalem" meant simply the 



92 God's Missionary Plan 

announcement of the resurrection in that city, 
and that James ought not to have tarried there 
to build up a Christian community, is to accept 
the premillenarian view, and to abandon the 
Christianization of the race until Jesus returns 
to earth in person. Some duties are undoubtedly 
collective, and I believe the evangelization of the 
world to be such a duty. Paul represented the 
church as a human body, with a different task 
assigned to each member thereof. Regarding 
yourself as one member of the body of Christ 
and as a member formed for specific Christian 
work, the question as to. whether you should 
go as a missionary is to be determined, not on 
the one side by the feeling that everyone is 
called to be a missionary and you must have a 
special dispensation from God to remain at 
home, nor upon the other side by the conviction 
that no one need go until he receives some special 
and imperative call to missions ; it is to be deter- 
mined first by the maintenance of such an un- 
selfish spirit as leaves you willing either to go 
or to stay, and second by practical and providen- 
tial considerations: 
Filial First, one should be free from such obligations 

to support or to extend personal care to father 
and mother as preclude a foreign residence. If 
parents have become dependent upon their chil- 
dren for daily care and there are no other children 



Obligations 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 93 

who can render this service, one ought not to go 
to far-distant lands. 

Second, while there are splendid fields for mis- Questions of 
sionary activity in temperate regions of Europe, Ensure, 
northern China, southern South America, and Health 
Africa, nevertheless five sixths of the unevangel- 
ized people upon the earth live in tropical or 
semi-tropical climates. Moreover, we must bear 
in mind that medical facilities are far less in 
any mission field than at home. We have first- 
class physicians on the mission fields, and we 
have a far larger proportion of hospitals to the 
members of the church there than at home. 
Nevertheless, every one familiar with the foreign 
field knows that missionaries must often live re- 
moved from a physician, and that they must 
often make journeys in which it is impossible for 
them to see a physician for weeks ; and that the 
hospital facilities in foreign lands are far less 
complete than in the home land. Moreover, ex- 
posure to almost all types of disease is inevitable 
in foreign lands in mission work. Bearing in 
mind these facts, all candidates for the mission 
field should be persons of good health, of unusual 
promise of physical life, and willing to face these 
dangers of physical disease which inhere in 
missionary activity. 

Third, one should have such scholarship and Scholarshi P 

■ «••!• mi iii- and Mental 

mental discipline as will enable him to master a strength 



94 God's Missionary Plan 

foreign language, and such general scholarship 
as enables him to distinguish between the essen- 
tials and non-essentials in Christianity as com- 
pared with other religions. 
The Mission- Fourth, the missionary should be companion- 

ary to be 

compan- able and capable in the college phrase of "team 
ionabie work." The smaller number of workers in the 

foreign field necessitates much closer union and 
much fuller cooperation than does the work in 
the home field. It frequently happens that un- 
married women engaged in foreign work must 
live in the same house in relations as close as 
those of sisters; and on account of the frequent 
changes of workers necessary in foreign fields 
one must not simply be capable of friendship 
with some congenial spirit, but possess the com- 
panionable quality, 
sympathetic Fifth, the missionary must be a person of 
Attractive large sympathies. He must not be provincial 
in his likes and dislikes, with race antipathies, 
but catholic in his appreciation of all men. 
Some really pious people cannot abide the 
black man or the yellow man; they assume 
an autocratic attitude toward other races; and 
the people to whom they are sent to minister feel 
repelled from them, though often unable to ex- 
plain the reason. The missionary should be a 
man of attractive personality, and should not 
only love the people to whom he goes but be able 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 95 

to compel in return their love for himself as well 
as for his Master. 

Sixth, the missionary must possess an invincible °P timis *ic 
optimism, an unconquerable faith in God, in the Faith 
divine promises, and in the divine providence. 
He must have an enthusiasm for humanity and a 
belief in the possibilities for good of the people 
to whom he ministers. Again and again his 
faith will be tried; people will disappoint him 
and the work will become discouraging and he 
will grow homesick. Unless he is a man of in- 
domitable faith, he ought not to be sent to a 
foreign land by the church and left to struggle 
alone on that far-flung battle line for the ad- 
vancement of the kingdom. 

Seventh, with a charity that hopeth all things, Abounding in 
believeth all things, endureth all things, there s^sT 01 * 
must be combined an uncommon amount of com- 
mon sense, a knowledge of human nature, and a 
sound, practical judgment; otherwise a man's 
enthusiasm will make him a very unsafe director 
of great and far-reaching enterprises. 

Eighth, along with these other qualifications, Having Gifts 
the missionary needs the gift of leadership. He 
must have the power to inspire men of a foreign 
tongue and of an alien race to follow him and 
ability to make the Christian faith self-propa- 
gating in a foreign soil. He needs the power of 
initiative, the imaginative faculty, which on its 



g6 God's Missionary Plan 

religious side is faith in the sense of vision; for 
he must be a creator of institutions, the molder 
of a new civilization. 
Difficulties of Along with these practical considerations, it 
may be well to add also some of the difficulties 
of the foreign field : 
Need of the Ninth, the candidate for missionary work must 
S p irit er have much of the soldier spirit in him. He must 

live far away from his native land. He is sepa- 
rated from the friends and the influences of his 
childhood. He must consent to separation for 
longer or shorter periods from his family, for in 
most cases physical and moral reasons demand 
sending the children to a temperate climate and 
to a Christian environment for their education ; 
and their departure from the foreign field fre- 
quently must take place at so early an age that 
the mother is compelled to accompany them. 
Absence of Tenth, the missionary is isolated from the in- 
fluences which often seem essential to intellectual 
growth. There is an absence of competition in 
the pulpit; there is frequently the absence of 
men of culture and congenial intellectual tastes 
and spirit which contributes so much mental 
stimulus to one's own growth. The daily, weekly, 
and all current literature reaches him at so 
late a date as to lose much of its interest. He 
cannot visit book stores and libraries and examine 
a hundred volumes from which he may select 



Intellectual 
Stimulus 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 97 



some to stimulate his mental life. It is a condi- 
tion of intellectual as well as of family loneli- 
ness. 

From the considerations named above we 
reach the conclusion that the call to evangelize 
the nations must be taken as a collective and 
not as an individual command. But if the cali 
to evangelize the race is a collective duty, then 
each member of the kingdom has a part in it 
assigned him by God : whether going to the field, 
or praying, giving, and training others to go; 
and all of us, at home and abroad, are equally 
responsible for the task. This is the truth which 
underlies Mr. Speer's contention. Every Chris- 
tian is responsible for his share in the evangeliza- 
tion of the race. 

Turning now to the encouragements to mis- 
sion work, the very harshness of the conditions 
secures a select body of men and women. If 
the prophetic class is to a considerable extent 
the salt which saves the nations, the missionaries 
are the prophets of the prophetic class, the min- 
isters of the ministry. Few persons accept this 
call unless they have a passion for service; and 
this very passion for service, this obedience to 
the divine summons, puts missionaries as a class 
in unusual touch with God, a touch, however, 
by no means impossible to those at home. The 
very absence of social distractions, the very 



Each 

Member 

Responsible 



Encourage- 
ments to Mis 
sion Work 



98 God's Missionary Plan 

absence of intellectual distractions in the way 
of the daily papers, large and well-stocked book- 
stores and crowded libraries, the very lack of 
external opportunities and stimuli to diversions, 
makes the missionary a thinker rather than a 
reader. The deep and appalling needs which 
everywhere surround him drive him to God and 
make him an intellectual creator rather than a 
receiver of other men's thoughts. Hence our 
missionaries as a class, while deprived of the 
intellectual stimulus of the home life, nevertheless 
Mental Pro- often perhaps are the most intellectually pro- 
sttouiated 8 ductive class in the Christian church. One of 
the most brilliant and spiritually helpful writers 
in the home church said to me recently : "I fear 
that we must look to the mission fields for the 
production of our theology and of our philoso- 
phy/' He added, that there is a breadth of view 
coming from the contact with civilizations and 
religions, an opportunity for meditation so essen- 
tial to creative literature, an appeal to the crea- 
tive faculty by the appalling needs of non-Chris- 
tian peoples, and above all, a closeness of walk 
with God which in his judgment form the con- 
ditions for the production of the Christian litera- 
ture of the future. Putting the matter in another 
form, he said that if Christian literature is only 
the record of spiritual life and experience, he 
believed that the record in foreign fields would 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 99 

eventually surpass that in the home fields, be- 
cause spiritual life, not necessarily but almost 
inevitably, is richer, fuller, and more varied there. 

On the positive side also is another important The Mission- 
consideration. The missionary must necessarily and creator 
be a leader of men, of communities, of churches, 
and in some measure, of nations. No one at all 
familiar either with the lack of home resources 
or the opportunities in the foreign field dreams 
that the missionaries can ever evangelize, much 
less Christianize, any foreign field. The whole 
stress of missionary effort is put upon the de- 
velopment of self-propagation and of self-sup- 
port in foreign lands. To supply the empire 
of China alone with the number of missionaries 
that there are ministers in the home land — not 
to mention physicians and teachers — would re- 
quire more than eight hundred thousand men. 
All Protestantism has in China, including preach- 
ers, physicians, and teachers, and the wives of 
the missionaries, 3,241 workers; the missionary 
must be a leader, a creator in the foreign field. 

The opportunity for leadership is vastly Vast Possibu- 
greater than in the home land. Men who in the influence 
home land would hardly venture to publish a 
sermon are translating the Bible and thus mold- 
ing the religious thought and fixing the language 
of provinces and empires for centuries. They 
are creating a literature and writing the theolo- 



ioo God's Missionary Plan 

gies and thus molding the intellectual and spir- 
itual life of millions of people. They are laying 
the foundations of the educational systems of 
countries, and leading in the introduction of 
Western medical and other sciences. There are 
a large number of men in China, as in other 
countries, who are doing the so-called work of 
evangelists. But these men are locating churches, 
determining what cities shall be opened up, se- 
lecting the sites for buildings, setting the style 
of preaching, determining the type of Christian 
experience, and shaping the polity of the church 
in foreign empires much as Asbury set the type 
of American Methodism. There are possibili- 
ties of influence for young men in foreign fields 
which are larger than the possibilities of useful- 
ness of the presiding elders in the metropolitan 
districts in America. Indeed while they do not 
exercise authority over so large a territory as 
that which Asbury traveled, they are the chief 
spiritual representatives of Christianity for 
vastly larger populations than Asbury ever 
reached. 
Partnership j n v iew of the high requirements for the for- 
eign field, of its hard conditions, and of its splen- 
did possibilities, what decision shall young people 
reach? We have already given our solution of 
the problem in the statement that each person 
ought to enter into partnership with Christ, be 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 101 



willing either to go to the foreign field or to stay 
at home as soon as he learns the divine plan for 
him. 

But how is one to learn the divine call? If I 
could begin with the children, I should say, first 
teach the child to offer himself in perfect conse- 
cration to God. By the help of God, even the 
boys and girls may maintain their union with 
Christ and live in the dispensation of the Spirit. 
With this fundamental condition maintained one 
cannot make any serious mistake in regard to 
his external work. Character is higher than 
achievement ; being Christlike is even better than 
doing the external work which Christ would have 
us perform. 

Second, secure the best preparation it is pos- 
sible to secure, not shirking years of hard study 
and self-denial, to fit yourself for your tasks. 
Moses, Isaiah, Paul, Luther, and Wesley were 
among the best-trained men in the world's his- 
tory. Jesus was thirty years in growth and prepa- 
ration, and had only three years to do the work 
his Father gave to him. So tarry at your physi- 
cal and mental and spiritual Jerusalem until you 
are endued with power from on high. 

Third, having maintained your consecration 
and secured your preparation, say unto God and 
to the church, "Here am I, send me." Do not 
think of yourself more highly than you ought to 



Character 
First 



Full 
Preparation 



Active 
Service 



102 God's Missionary Plan 

think; "Fools rush in where angels fear to 
tread." On the other hand, do not shirk duty- 
through false humility. In fact, you are too close 
to yourself to determine what you can or cannot 
do. Above all, do not try to dodge responsibili- 
ties; in essence they are equally great at home 
or abroad. Go into business, teaching, medicine ; 
go to South America, to India, China, to Africa 
as the intimations of the Spirit, as your own 
incipient experiences of various types of work, 
as the advice of your most consecrated and level- 
headed friends, as the openings of divine Provi- 
dence, and the call of duty dictate. "Go in any- 
where ! There is good fighting all along the line." 
unselfish Q ne f ur ther word in regard to the foreign 

Choice for ~. . 

one's work. If you feel called of God to engage in 

ufe-work special service like the ministry, the question 
with reference to your field is, Where can I make 
my life count most for the Master? This is not 
a selfish or an ambitious question. The candi- 
dates must dismiss all plans of selfish ease or 
personal ambition. The question is not where 
life will count most for self but where it will 
count most for the Master. At this point, I do 
not think one ought to wait for a special impera- 
tive divine call. John Wesley opposed some 
very earnest Christians who maintained that 
they must wait for a divine impulse before offer- 
ing prayer or speaking in meeting or going on 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 103 

errands of love; he denounced as enthusiasts 
those who would not engage in works of mercy 
or charity unless their hearts felt free to it. So 
in deciding between the home and foreign field, 
the candidate must be guided by the same com- 
mon sense, the same comparative knowledge of 
the fields, the judgment of others, the providen- 
tial openings, the inward impressions of the will 
of God which would guide him in determining 
whether he w r ould preach in Maine or California, 
in Minnesota or Mississippi. 

We appreciate greatly the sincere humility of 
those young people who feel that the responsibili- God 
ties of the foreign work are beyond their abili- 
ties to meet. Three considerations may lead 
the humble in spirit to engage in this high and 
difficult work. First, the intellectual, moral, and 
spiritual qualifications required for the foreign 
w r ork are required largely for the home w r ork 
also. Second, it is impossible to foretell what 
the grace of God may accomplish in a human 
soul; the promises of God have never yet been 
exhausted by any Christian worker. There is an 
immense amount of latent talent in so-called or- 
dinary human nature, as was revealed in the 
case of the disciples whom Jesus called in person 
and as has been revealed by thousands whom 
he has later called through the Spirit. Great 
needs develop great leaders, as in our Revolution 



Readiness to 
be Used of 



104 God's Missionary Plan 

and our Civil War. Third, the very fact that few 
Christians can enter the foreign field puts all the 
more obligation on each of us to maintain his 
generic resolution and say: "Here am I, Lord, 
send me." This will lead you to the self-sacri- 
fice involved in the offer of yourself for the work. 
If you are accepted, well; if not, still well; you 
have become a missionary in spirit and you will 
receive the missionary's reward. 
Fields ^ n re S ar d to the field which one should enter, 
here again he should consult the varying needs 
of each and the providential openings. In 
Europe, we need men and women abreast of 
European culture. Here our work is among the 
most advanced peoples. Indeed we send only 
a few leaders to European lands, and depend 
upon the European Methodist churches to supply 
the great majority of our ministers. France in 
the crisis through which she is passing offers the 
best opening for Protestantism today which she 
has offered since the Reformation. Russia in her 
period of storm and stress appeals to the brainiest 
and most heroic persons, and if she adopts a con- 
stitution, a period of unprecedented progress is 
before her. In Japan, the preliminary work has 
been done and the Japanese have entered upon 
a material civilization in many respects equal 
to that of Europe and America. Japan will lead 
the Orient, and men and women of culture and 



Oriental 
Development 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 105 

capacity to be the leaders of the leaders of the 
Orient are needed for this field. China is today 
where Japan was twenty years ago. But her 
people are a people with three thousand years of 
civilization behind them, with the pride which 
comes naturally from a. long history and a long 
ancestry, and with natural abilities unsurpassed 
by those of any other people on earth. Moreover, Remarkable 
no empire of equal population ever awakened so 
rapidly as China is awakening today. Japan is 
thoroughly awake and she is advancing rapidly; 
while work in India is twenty years in advance 
of China. China is just now turning a corner 
in human history. Here, again, strong, cul- 
tured, capable leaders are needed. In Korea, 
the people are turning to Christ more rapidly 
than the people of any other nation. They 
are alarmed and depressed by their fear of 
Japanese supremacy. They need foreign lead- 
ers who can sympathize with them and guide 
them, and upon whom they can rely in this crisis. 
In South America, a great continent is awaken- 
ing. We have work in nine nations. But the 
work is in its incipient stages. The nations are 
at the threshold of large growth and greater pos- 
sibilities. Here again leaders are needed, capable 
of guiding a people in reaction from a distorted 
type of Christianity and of laying the foundations 
of great republics. In Africa, we have a conti- 



106 God's Missionary Plan 

ncnt just emerging into light. Here leaders are 
needed who can reach perhaps the most back- 
ward race on earth. They will need to lay the 
very foundations of civilization. The mission- 
aries also must work in connection with foreign 
countries. If they can succeed in securing the 
cooperation and in some measure directing the 
efforts of these foreign leaders, and if at the same 
time they can secure the confidence of the Afri- 
cans, they can raise, slowly but surely, the sub- 
To create a merged race of earth; indeed they will almost 
create a new race. In Malaysia, as in Africa, 
we are laying the foundations of civilization and 
working with able representatives of ruling na- 
tions. In India, the work is perhaps not quite 
so far advanced as in Japan, but is farther ad- 
vanced than in China, much farther than in 
Korea, and vastly farther than in Africa. The 
missionaries must be able to compare favorably 
with the civil and military representatives of 
Great Britain, and they must in some measure 
mediate between restless young India and the 
mother country. India justly enjoys the prestige 
of the most successful missionary work in Meth- 
odism. In the Philippines the missionary has the 
double advantage of laboring among people who 
are rapidly turning to Protestant Christianity 
through reaction from a distorted faith, and 
who at the same time are under the control of 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 107 



our own government. But the missionary must 
contend against the same vices of drunkenness, 
lust, and greed in trade which assail us in our 
great cities at home. 

We have completed the discussion of the prin- 
ciples which should guide one in offering him- 
self to the foreign work. It would be unfair, 
however, to close this chapter without calling 
the attention of young people to two facts. 

I. It is a condition and not a theory w r hich 
confronts us. In holding several Conferences in 
the United States and appointing nearly a thou- 
sand men to their work, I have been made pain- 
fully aware, as is every bishop in Methodism, 
of the need of more men to supply the small 
churches paying from five to seven hundred dol- 
lars per year. As a matter of fact, we could 
supply most of this need from the men w r ho are 
in the ministry if we were to utilize those on the 
superannuate and supernumerary list and those 
holding nominal appointments. But while there 
is some scarcity of men for the small appoint- 
ments, there is a fearful pressure for appoint- 
ments ranging from eight hundred dollars 
upward. In every large Conference, also, the 
presiding elders and the bishop are painfully 
conscious of the fact that they have a large num- 
ber of men worthy of promotion and capable 
of larger work and larger responsibilities, but 



Two Facts to 
be Noted 



The Crowded 
Home Field 



108 God's Missionary Plan 

who cannot be advanced to their proper positions 
without crowding other worthy men out of the 
positions which they are now occupying. The 
pressure upon the appointing powers to find 
places for worthy men in the better and higher 
grade appointments is painful. As a matter of 
fact, large numbers of ministers must occupy 
lower positions than they are fitted for until their 
brethren in the ministry are called home to 
heaven, and death makes places for them. 
The Needy I n other denominations similar conditions 

oreign le are found. From one fifth to one fourth 
of the men qualified to preach in some leading 
denominations in the United States today are 
without appointments. It is indeed true that in 
these same denominations there are many 
churches without pastors ; and the laymen and es- 
pecially committees on pulpit supply will say that 
no first-class men in their denominations are with- 
out appointments. Looked at from one point of 
view, the statement is correct. The vast major- 
ity of ministers who are capable of drawing large 
audiences, of filling the treasuries of the church, 
of increasing the membership rapidly, of securing 
large gifts for charities, are employed in all of 
our denominations. But may it not be true that 
the very abundance of the supply at home has 
blinded the home churches to the real qualifica- 
tions of the minister. If the real qualifications 



Divine Method of Securing Workers 109 

of the prophet of God are the ability to direct men 
into paths of righteousness and the consecration 
which will enable him to lead seekers to the 
Lord Jesus Christ by personal example, then 
there are multitudes of ministers in the home 
churches who are either without appointments 
or without places equal to their abilities. In a 
word, the ministry at home impresses me as a 
greatly over-crowded profession; and if we are 
to wait for the law of supply and demand to 
operate in order to secure living salaries, we 
shall witness the painful spectacle of persons feel- 
ing called to the Christian ministry turning aside 
to other vocations through lack of proper sup- 
port inside the sacred calling. When one turns 
from the home to the foreign field, just the 
opposite spectacle confronts him. Here in many white for the 
cases the fields are literally white for the harvest. Harvest 
We now have cities offering to build and equip 
hospitals if the church at home will only send 
physicians ; offering to turn over their temples 
for worship if the church at home will only 
send the ministers ; cities offering to hire halls 
and pay the rent and help support the preacher 
if we will only send them ministers. There are 
almost countless places where the people are 
willing to contribute at least part of the expense 
toward maintaining education if people can be 
sent to teach them Christianity and the Western 



no God's Missionary Plan 

science. We have one minister at home for every 
544 of the population, and one ordained mission- 
ary in China for every 219,000 persons. 
The can to 2 . We are all familiar with the great migratory 

the Young 1 . i 1 , , « ? , 

christians movements which have taken place during the 
of America i as t century from Europe to the new world. 
Most of us rejoice that our more or less distant 
ancestors had the courage and the enterprise 
and the heroism which prompted them to leave 
old associations and the influences of the home 
land that they might find greater opportunities 
for their energies and a wider field for their 
endeavors in the new world. Many of us are 
descendants of those who crossed the Alleghanies 
and poured into the Mississippi Valley from 
the same motive. We are the children or the 
descendants of emigrants. The call of distant 
lands is in our blood. The heroism of the 
pioneers and the emigrants, of the creators of 
empires and the founders of institutions, belongs 
to us. A glance at history shows the struggles 
of civilization passing from the Mediterranean 
Basin to the Atlantic Basin, and now passing 
from the Atlantic Basin to the Pacific Basin. Will 
not the same spirit of enterprise, not unmixed with 
heroism, which brought your ancestors from the 
old world to the new, from the Atlantic Coast 
to the Mississippi Valley, call many who read 
these words to become leaders in that struggle 



Divine Method of Securing Workers in 

which will take place in the twentieth century 
to determine what language, what civilization, 
what religion, shall become dominant in the world- 
neighborhood gathering around the Pacific? 
Were Paul facing the same opportunity today, whatPaui 
as are multitudes of young Christians in 
America, where, in view of the conditions which 
confront us and the spirit which he showed on 
earth, do you think he would cast his lot ? Would 
not the same call to the Gentiles or nations which 
made him a missionary when the Gospel was 
scarcely planted in Judaea lead him from the 
United States to help supply the word of life 
to the regions of Asia, Africa, and South Amer- 
ica, where multitudes are suffering from lack of 
light? We may say to parents, in closing, that 
God had only one Son, and that God so loved the 
world that he gave Jesus to be a foreign mission- 
ary. 



CHAPTER VII 
The Divine Method of Securing Means 

The The principle underlying this chapter is the 

Financial same as the principle underlying Chapter Six. 
Problem There is no possibility of securing funds suffi- 
cient to enable the church to meet the crisis which 
is upon her save by training the members from 
infancy up in the doctrine that every man's life 
is a plan of God, and that it is the privilege of 
every Christian to enter into partnership with 
God in business and home life just as fully as 
in the ministry and on the mission field. When 
the church becomes imbued with the conviction 
that all the redeemed are priests, as John teaches 
in Revelation, that God has a plan for every 
human life ; that he is just as ready to cooperate 
with a mother in caring for her children, with a 
farmer in tilling his field, with the merchant in 
his business, and to suffer with the sick ones in 
their illness, as to cooperate with the minister and 
the missionary, we shall reach a higher type of 
Christian living and shall take God into partner- 
ship in our daily lives. 
God's It is simply impossible, however, for a busi- 

i^Business ness man to ta ke God into partnership in his 
business life without sharing with God the profits 

112 



Divine Method of Securing Means 113 

of the business. I do not mean by this that God 
demands harsh and impossible conditions in re- 
gard to the gifts of the man engaged in the 
so-called secular pursuits; but that he does de- 
mand systematic and proportional sharing of the 
income of the business with himself. I do not 
mean by this either that systematic or propor- 
tional giving necessarily demands that the money 
shall be given to some general collection of the 
church or to the pastor of the church for some 
local church work. Jesus says in regard to the 
cup of cold water, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto 
one of these my brethren, even these least, ye 
did it unto me." So also the Good Samaritan on 
his way from Jerusalem to Jericho was laboring 
together with God in relieving the wants of the 
wounded man. 

It is clear to all that there must be a large increase of 
increase in the funds of the Home Mission and Resources 
Church Extension Society if we are to take 
America for Christ; that there must be a large 
increase in the collections for education if we are 
to capture the rising generation; that there 
must be a large increase in foreign mission funds 
if we are to take the world for Christ; that we 
must more generously relieve the distress of our 
worn-out ministers and must at least enable our 
pastors to educate their children and keep out of 
debt if we are to maintain the efficiency of our 



114 God's Missionary Plan 

home churches. In a word, there must be a large 
increase of resources, 
systematic ^ enduring increase in our resources can be 

Giving ° 

secured without systematic giving. The church 
can never capture the world for Christ so long 
as our gifts rest upon spasmodic emotions rather 
than upon conscience. Again, our giving must 
be in proportion to our income. The whole his- 
tory of the Christian church does not show a 
single mission established or a single church 
maintained by appeals for each member to give 
one dollar. The cry for an equal gift from each 
member of the church at once lowers the stand- 
ard of the wealthiest members to a pittance ; and 
forces upon the poor members the conviction 
that Christ does not demand of them the same 
amount as of the richest member. It is entirely 
proper to compare our average contribution of 
fifty-four cents per member with the average con- 
tribution of nearly one dollar per member by the 
members of some other churches, and to ask for 
an average of one dollar from Methodists; this 
has been done by our leaders in missionary enter- 
prise and with good results. But an assessment 
of one dollar per member is false in principle and 
disappointing in practice. All business men are 
agreed that system and proportion are as essen- 
tial to success in church work as in business life. 
Hence all business men are prepared to unite 



Divine Method of Securing Means 115 

with the minister in insisting upon the apostolic 
injunction of systematic and proportional giv- 
ing. "Now concerning the collection for the 
saints, as I gave order to the churches of Gala- 
tia, so also do ye. Upon the first day of the 
week let each one of you lay by him in store, as 
he may prosper." A study of the passage shows 
that it is not simply a suggestion ; that it is a 
general order, one which Paul had given to other 
churches as well as to the church at Corinth ; that 
it enjoins systematic giving at regular intervals 
established in advance; that it demands propor- 
tional giving according to the income of each. 
The two principles of system and proportion 
clearly laid down by the apostle Paul are essen- 
tial to success in every business enterprise; and 
business men recognize them as essential to the 
successful management of every church enter- 
prise. 

As I have worked and prayed over this chapter A Definite 

,« . . , - Proportion 

the conviction has grown upon me that, in not Essential 
urging any proportion in giving, the church has 
made the same mistake that she would have made 
had she not fixed upon one seventh of every 
Christian's time for worship, but had left every 
member free to set aside so much or so little of 
his time from business as might seem good in his 
own eyes. It is plain to all that, had not the early 
Christians set aside one day in seven for the 



u6 God's Missionary Plan 

service of God, and resolutely abstained from 
their ordinary work on that day, Christianity 
would never have become one of the great world 
religions. It grows equally clear to me that were 
the Christians, along with the devotion of one 
seventh of their time to the Lord, to set aside 
also one tenth of their income for his service, 
the world would be speedily evangelized. 
Analogy of Dropping all thought of one tenth, let us 
Sabbath plead simply for some definite proportion in 
giving. Every argument which can be used 
against any definite proportion in giving, every 
charge that such a rule is legal and mechanical, 
that it contradicts the whole spirit of the New 
Testament, has been used against the mainte- 
nance of the Lord's Day. And, indeed, you can 
find a stronger argument against the mainte- 
nance of the Sabbath on the ground that it con- 
tradicts the free spirit of Christianity, and you 
can cite stronger arguments in both the words 
and works of Christ for the abolition of the Sab- 
bath than for the abolition of tithing. In the 
case of the Lord's Day you ask every Chris- 
tian, no matter how poor he is, no matter 
how large his family, to abstain from his ordi- 
nary employment one day in seven and devote 
the time to the worship and service of God. 
The demand for the same amount of time from 
every Christian, whatever his condition, is more 



Divine Method of Securing Means 117 

mechanical and legal than the demand for a 
proportion of his earnings. In time the poor 
man sets aside the same amount as the rich man. 
Proportional giving may not take one fiftieth as 
much money from the poor man as from the rich 
man. But every man recognizes that the ob- 
servance of the Lord's Day, with proper excep- 
tions for the works of mercy and necessity, and 
the whole of it observed in accordance with the 
Master's injunction that the Sabbath was made 
for man, not man for the Sabbath — every man Gains to 
recognizes that the Lord's Day so observed has lvlll2atlon 
brought infinite gains to our civilization. Who 
doubts that an equally universal observance of 
proportional giving, not in a mechanical or legal 
manner, not with the conception that one tenth 
or any proportion discharges our obligation to 
God, but as a recognition that we have been re- 
deemed by the lifeblood of Jesus, and that all 
we have and are belongs to him — who doubts 
that such proportional giving would prove an 
infinite gain to the church and to the civilization 
of the twentieth century ? Let us at least resolve 
that we will ourselves begin at once, and that 
we will lead every member of the church over 
whom we have sufficient influence to systematic 
giving of some proportion of his income for the 
service of the Lord. 
What ought this proportion to be ? How much 



n8 



God's Missionary Plan 



Not Less than of his income ought the church to ask every 
member to set aside for all religious and benevo- 
lent causes ? As already written I would not wish 
to lay down a hard and fast mechanical rule 
which does violence to the spirit of the Master. 
Certainly the same liberal exceptions on the 
ground of mercy and necessity should be made as 
obtain in the observance of the Lord's Day. 
With such liberal exceptions according to the 
spirit of the Master, I believe that the gifts 
under the new dispensation of the followers of 
him who gave the last full measure of his life 
for us ought not to fall below the gifts under 
the old dispensation — that the Christian should 
not be stingier than the Jew. 

A careful reading of Lev. xxvii, 30-32; Deut. 
xii, 5-1 1, 28, and xiv, 22-29, will convince any 
person that tithing has the sanction of the Old 
Testament: "And all the tithe of the land, 
whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit 
of the tree, is Jehovah's." "Ye shall not do 
after all the things that we do here this day, every 
man whatsoever is right in his own eyes." What 
an exact description of our present method! 
"But when ye go over the Jordan, and dwell in 
the land which Jehovah your God causeth you to 
inherit . . . thither shall ye bring all that I com- 
mand you, your burnt-offerings, and your sacri- 
fices, your tithes. . . . Observe and hear all these 



Tithing 
Sanctioned 
in the Old 
Testament 



Divine Method of Securing Means 119 

words which I command thee, that it may go 
well with thee, and with thy children after thee 
for ever." "Thou shalt surely tithe all the in- 
crease of thy seed, . . .and the firstlings of thy 
herd and of thy flock ; that thou mayest learn to 
fear Jehovah thy God always. . . . Thou shalt 
bring forth all the tithe of thine increase ; . . . 
and the Levite, because he hath no portion nor 
inheritance with thee, and the sojourner, and the 
fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy 
gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; 
that Jehovah thy God may bless thee in all the 
work of thine hand which thou doest." From 
such passages as the above it seems clear that 
the Old Testament indorses the principle of 
setting aside one tenth for the specific support 
of the church, and that the fatherless and the 
widows probably were exempt because they are 
mentioned as recipients of the tithe, and that 
additional gifts according to the means and 
spirit of the worshiper were provided for in the 
"offerings and sacrifices" mentioned in addition 
to the tithes. 

The Jewish priests carried the exactions of the In Prin cipie 

. . , . Approved by 

tithe so far as to include mmt, anise, and cummin Christ 
— mere condiments of food like our salt and 
pepper. They insisted upon their tithes, and 
neglected the weightier matters of judgment, 
mercy, and faith. Jesus, as the real leader of 



120 God's Missionary Plan 

all reforms, laid emphasis, of course, upon great 
principles, like law, justice, and mercy — "These 
ought ye to have done." But, like many re- 
formers, Jesus never was careless as to details. 
He knew that the mastery of great principles 
manifests itself in faithfulness in little things. 
Hence he adds, in regard to the application 
of the tithe to the mere condiments of the 
table, "And not to leave the other undone/' 
It is difficult to find a stronger approval of the 
principle of tithing than these words afford. We 
are sure that we speak after both the letter and 
the spirit of the New Testament in urging sys- 
tematic and proportional giving. We believe 
that we speak after the mind of Christ in sug- 
gesting that the Christian should set aside for the 
service of God and man not less than one tenth 
of his income, 
piea for the a serious objection is presented in the name 

Poor a 

subterfuge °f the poor. I have been asked many times 
whether I think it Christlike to demand that 
a poor man with a family of ten children 
and an income of six hundred dollars a year 
ought to give as much as a single man with an 
equal income and no relatives depending upon 
him. The answer is fourfold: (i) The law of 
necessity upon the part of the poor man and of 
mercy upon the part of the church may well 
absolve some persons from making any immedi- 



Divine Method of Securing Means 121 

ate returns to the church. (2) If the poor give 
ten per cent, or even two per cent, many a rich 
man is called to give more than ten per cent. (3) 
'The submerged tenth" in any church never re- 
mains submerged. It usually rises into the com- 
fortable and often into the wealthier class as the 
years go by ; and the church can well afford and 
is willing to wait for the poorest to escape from 
their distress before urging them to give to any 
considerable extent. (4) I have never known 
the real difficulty to be presented by a poor 
family in any concrete case in the history of 
tithing. The poor are not the people who rebel 
against tithing, when tithing is presented with 
the freedom of Christ, and in his spirit. It is 
the rich and the comfortable who refuse in the 
name of the poor to give a tenth or any other 
proportion of their income systematically. 

We do not deem it wise to insist that every An Aggregate 
member of the church should give exactly one 
tenth of his net income. The aggregate of all 
our gifts ought to reach one tenth of the income 
of the church members. But there are some 
who surely ought to give more than one tenth 
of their incomes, while those in sickness and 
poverty and distress should no more be forced 
to meet an assessment by the stewards than the 
wounded man lying by the Jericho wayside. We 
must not import legalistic principles into the 



Tithe 



122 God's Missionary Plan 

New Testament. "The letter killeth but the 
spirit giveth life." On the other hand, we are 
equally sure that each Christian should aim to 
set aside some fixed proportion of his net in- 
come for the Master's work. Opposition to 
system and proportion is unbusinesslike anti- 
nomianism. We may be sure also that the ag- 
gregate of our gifts as a church ought not to 
fall below the Old Testament standard. If you 
fix a higher proportion for yourself, you can 
feel a satisfaction in helping to supply some 
less favored brother's deficiency. If you fix less 
than this proportion for yourself, you put your- 
self upon the list of those unable or unwilling 
to meet a fair proportion of the responsibilities 
and burdens which the Christian Church must 
assume if the world is to be redeemed, 
value of j us t here we are met by the suggestion that an 

incom? 111 ^ Old Testament system of tithing is not adapted 
to our modern and complex age; that it is very 
difficult for many men to determine what is their 
income after paying the legitimate expenses 
necessary to obtain their income; where the line 
is to be drawn between the relations who have a 
legitimate — almost a legal — claim upon then}, 
and humanity in general. A moment's thought 
will suffice to show that this objection is not 
against tithing, but against all proportional giv- 
ing; that it is a plea for the old lack of system 



Divine Method of Securing Means 123 

which has left the church with an empty treasury 
in face of the greatest opportunity of the ages — 
a plea for the lack of system which has been one 
of the most fruitful sources of failure in the 
business world. However much effort may be 
required to ascertain the facts, the exact knowl- 
edge of one's income and expenditure and of his 
financial condition is one of the deepest needs of 
a Christian, not only on religious, but on financial 
grounds. 

I believe that the struggle to bring our church a Tenth is 

. . . r . - , Practicable 

up to giving some proportion of its wealth sys- 
tematically, even to the extent of one tenth or 
more, is not so difficult, and that the end is not 
so far removed as our fears may indicate. The 
income of the members of our church is estimated 
at eight hundred millions a year. Mr. Stephen 
V. R. Ford, editor of the Methodist Year 
Book, holds that the total gifts of Methodists 
for current expenses, church building, pastoral 
support, education, benevolent purposes, and all 
other causes, now reaches forty millions a year. 

If each member of our church whom the pas- Training and 
tor and official board know to be able to pay the pi aC e of 
amount could be brought to a subscription of ten Im P ulse 
per cent of his income, those who would go be- 
yond ten per cent would bring the average up 
far beyond ten per cent of our incomes. Surely 
it is not an impossible task to lead the great ma- 



124 God's Missionary Plan 

jority of our members to fix upon some propor- 
tion of their income as a payment to the Lord 
who has redeemed them, and thus to bring our 
church as a whole to compliance with the apos- 
tolic injunction of systematic and proportional 
giving. If during the next five years we can 
bring the majority of God's children who know 
Christ as a Saviour and Lord to a regular offering 
of substantially ten per cent of their incomes, 
before the close of this generation we can give 
every child of God at least the invitation to 
come home. The more I study the New Testa- 
ment the more fully it seems to me that the divine 
injunction of proportional giving and the New 
Testament sanction for setting aside not less 
than one tenth of our income for the service of 
God and humanity is as strong as is the divine 
injunction to set aside one seventh of our time 
for the same purpose. In a word, the loose 
theory of grace, that spirit of antinomianism 
which has infected Protestant Christianity and 
led us to magnify emotional states and neglect 
consecrating the consecration of the will, accounts for the 
present crisis in missions. We have treated giv- 
ing so fully as a matter of impulse rather than 
of duty that Christians generally repudiate the 
claims of God and the church upon any fixed per 
cent of their income. Our giving is not system- 
atic and in proportion to our receipts, as the prin- 



Divine Method of Securing Means 125 

ciples of our faith require, but spasmodic and 
according to our impulses. 

We cannot adopt a false principle in religion Results of a 

Defective 

without the poison of it affecting our careers in standard 
business. Accordingly, our self-centered and un- 
systematic use of funds for God runs in a meas- 
ure throughout our acquisitions and more fully 
throughout our expenditures, and thus weakens 
the financial standing of millions of Christians. 
It is said that ninety-five per cent of men in 
business fail at some stage of their career. I 
have never succeeded in finding the data upon 
which this statement is based. I do not believe 
it to be true. Possibly ninety-five per cent of 
our business men change their business or their 
methods of business during their lifetime, thus 
indicating that in their judgment there was need 
and opportunity for improvement. If it were 
said that ninety-five per cent of business men fail 
to make an adequate success in business, that 
they fail to measure up to their possibilities, 
everybody would accept the statement as true. 

Financial failures are due to carelessness and a Cure for 

- . , .. ., - , . Carelessness 

laziness or to greed and speculation in money and 
making, or else to carelessness and extravagance Extravagance 
in spending it. But the adoption of system and 
self-denial in the use of money will do much to 
promote system and devotion to daily duties in 
making money. The same conscientiousness 



126 God's Missionary Plan 

which leads a young man to set aside a tenth 
of his income for the Lord in spending his money, 
that same conscientiousness will keep him from 
trying to make money through speculation and 
cheating — fruitful sources of financial failure. 
But more Americans fail through carelessness 
and extravagance in spending money than 
through dishonesty in making it. Their expendi- 
tures do not seem to themselves extravagant; 
but they are out of proportion to their income. 
All business men know that the foundations of 
fortunes are laid not so frequently or so fully 
through large earnings as through self-denial in 
seif-Deniai spending money, through preserving a reason- 
able and constant margin between income and 
expenditure. Now, tithing or any system of 
proportional giving demands systematic, constant 
self-denial. It is an almost unfailing cure of 
extravagant or disproportionate expenditure. 
The young man who conscientiously sets aside 
for some good cause one tenth of his earnings 
will conscientiously use the remaining nine 
tenths ; and nine tenths conscientiously used will 
contribute vastly more to one's enrichment than 
ten tenths used in a haphazard, self-indulgent 
manner. So surely, therefore, as a young man 
refuses to deny himself and set aside any propor- 
tion of his income for benevolent purposes, so 
surely is he laving the foundation of carelessness, 



Divine Method of Securing Means 127 

of self-indulgence and thus making improbable 
the accumulation of a fortune. 

The margin is the key to fortune. The growth Mar & in the 
of a fortune depends not upon one's earnings, Fortune 
nor his expenditures alone, but upon the preser- 
vation of the margin between the two. Tithing 
teaches the doctrine of the margin, and inaugu- 
rates it in the life of every tither. Nine tenths 
in the hands of the man who has learned the doc- 
trine of the margin are more than ten tenths 
in the hands of the same man before he has 
learned obedience to that law. 

One can practice self-denial and system suf- ^ Ric ?" 

r J Poor Man 

ficiently to set aside a tithe and then keep it for 
himself. In case this man does not become 
greedy and overreach himself in his haste to be 
rich, he will reap the temporal reward of the 
tither. But he will miss the spiritual blessings. 
It is possible to accumulate money by observing 
the first half of the principle of tithing, namely, 
the doctrine of the margin. But the first half 
makes a rich-poor man. I know an aged couple 
who by forty years of business skill and self- 
denial accumulated more than a million dollars. 
They longed to enjoy what they supposed their 
rich neighbors enjoyed. They built one of the 
finest houses on the avenue in the city, or rather 
hired an architect to build it. They found the 
mansion a prison ; and the only part of it which 



128 God's Missionary Plan 

seemed at all like home was the kitchen ; and they 
lived there. They felt some slight stirrings of 
artistic taste, and they longed to have fine paint- 
ings on their walls like the paintings of their 
Purchasing new neighbors. Walking down the street one 
Supplies day — for they did not enjoy their carriage — they 
saw a lithograph which greatly pleased them. 
The old man was ashamed to display his igno- 
rance by asking its price. He had heard that 
good paintings cost from three hundred to five 
hundred dollars, and he knew this was very 
pretty. So with difficulty he wrote out his check 
and handed it to the clerk and asked to have a 
thousand dollars' worth of such pictures sent to 
his new home. He hoped he might receive two 
or possibly three of the pictures ; and was greatly 
astonished when a wagonload of lithographs was 
delivered at his home. You smile; but that 
aged millionaire and his wife were pitiably poor. 
It is possible to be rich in this world's goods and 
not rich toward God. There are Methodist mil- 
lionaires who throughout eternity will be poorer 
than the children of the almshouses. The cure 
for self-indulgence and extravagance and pov- 
erty on the one side and for greed and spiritual 
poverty on the other side is found in partnership 
with God carried on through proportional giving. 
"See that ye abound in this grace also." 

Above all there is a divine providence in hu- 



Divine Method of Securing Means 129 
man affairs. God is determined that everyone christian 

. . Stewardship 

of his children shall at least have the invitation 
to come home. But he cannot carry forward the 
great evangelistic, ecclesiastical, and educational 
enterprises necessary for the redemption of our 
race without immense sums of money. Hence 
he not only calls ministers and missionaries to 
peculiar tasks, but he calls all his children to fel- 
lowship and partnership with himself. We are 
all God's stewards, and each one must give an 
account of his stewardship. If we are faithful 
to the five talents committed to our care, we 
shall find them becoming ten. God wants men 
whom he can trust to use wealth for the kingdom, 
and he pours money into every such man's lap, 
unless he desires to use that man for some serv- 
ice even higher than faithful stewardship in the 
use of money. 

Many years ago a poor widow told her sons a widow's 
that they must learn to be generous, else they 
would become men of mean and little spirits. 
She enforced her teaching by putting into the 
hands of each child every Sunday morning a 
small amount of money for the support of the 
Gospel. Soon the children began to make the 
contribution from their own earnings. The 
mother's teaching was so impressed upon one 
son that he early determined to keep count of his 
contributions and to give a thousand dollars to 



Two Sons 



130 God's Missionary Plan 

the Lord in order that he might overcome the 
mean and stingy spirit which his mother had 
described and which he believed possessed him. 
The amount was twice as much as the mother 
and all the children were worth. The mother 
was surprised and gratified at the son's announce- 
ment of his purpose; but she did not expect he 
a Resolution W ould ever be able to carry it out. The resolu- 

Well Kept . r rr ■ -r* 1 ■ 1 1 

tion cost years of effort. But that son astonished 
and delighted his mother before her death by 
bringing to her his accounts, showing that he 
had paid a thousand dollars into the Lord's treas- 
ury. The industry and self-denial and system 
developed by this struggle became, with the 
blessing of God, the foundation of a successful 
business career. This man completed five years 
ago the larger but not more difficult task of rais- 
ing his gift of a thousand dollars to the Lord 
to one hundred thousand dollars. By his life and 
gifts probably he has done more for the church 
and the kingdom in the city where he lives than 
any minister who has served that city during his 
lifetime. How blessed is such a partnership with 
God! Upon the other hand, a brother of this 
man, who would not learn self-denial and thus 
become rich toward God, has become so reduced 
financially by his vices that for fifteen years he 
has been a pensioner on his more generous 
brother. You can multiply by the scores cases 



Divine Method of Securing Means 131 

similar to the above. The devil is a poor pay- 
master. You all know people who have been 
ruined by their extravagance. It is indeed 
possible that a few unsystematic, impulsive 
givers have occasionally subscribed too much for 
church enterprises. But you cannot name one 
systematic, conscientious, proportional giver, or 
a single tither who, by his own testimony, or in 
your own calm judgment, has suffered permanent 
financial loss. The Jews are the only people who 
through systematic, voluntary gifts have ever 
approached the tithe; they furnish fewer candi- 
dates for the almshouse than any other people, 
and they are confessedly the most successful peo- 
ple financially on earth — here is the scientific test 
of experiment. Nine tenths plus God are more 
than ten tenths without him. 

The crisis is upon us. The twentieth century A Crisis in the 

^ J World 

has dawned. The nations are at our doors and Movement 
needing help. God is hovering over us. Tithing, 
or at least proportional giving, is one method of 
relief, and so far as I can see, the only way out. 
You cannot maintain the New Testament exam- 
ple of the devotion of one seventh of one's time 
to the service and worship of God and deny the 
New Testament injunction and example of sys- 
tematic and proportional gifts for the worship 
and service of God. "Bring ye the whole tithe 
into the store-house, that there may be food in 



132 God's Missionary Plan 

my house, and prove me now herewith, saith 
Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open you the win- 
dows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, 
that there shall not be room enough to receive it" 
When the Pharisees brought their tithes of mint 
and anise and cummin and neglected the weight- 
ier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, "these," 
said Jesus, "ye ought to have done, and not to 
have left the other undone" 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Divine Method of Securing Results 

These mere glimpses of Christian work in china a 
China are not fair samples of the long and pain- Encourage- 
ful and discouraging labors which our mission- ment 
aries have been obliged to perform in every land. 
But each incident is true, and is a fair illustra- 
tion of the encouragement which is now coming 
to the missionaries in China as a result of one 
hundred years of effort and because of the 
strange awakening of the people. 

To begin at the beginning, so far as my work Pentecostal 

1 -r 7 1 n 1 Scenes in 

is concerned, I preached my first sermon to the Foochow 
Chinese in Foochow in 1904. While there are 
difficulties in preaching through an interpreter, 
there are sometimes advantages also. I had 
an opportunity, while the interpreter was trans- 
lating each sentence into Chinese, to think not 
only of the next sentence which I would utter, 
but to watch the effect of the last sentence upon 
the audience. I was preaching upon the new 
birth and upon the baptism of Pentecost. One 
who is accustomed to revival preaching at home 
learns to watch closely the temper of an audience. 
In this case, I soon became convinced that per- 
sons in the audience were under conviction either 

133 



134 God's Missionary Plan 

of sin or of the lack of the Holy Spirit. They 
listened with an intentness that astonished me, 
and I felt that I ought to close the meeting with 
an altar service. Upon the contrary, I remem- 
bered that in this city where I was now preaching 
our missionaries labored ten years, building two 
churches — one inside and one outside the city 
walls — establishing schools, conducting medical 
work, distributing tracts, before they could per- 
suade a single Chinese to be baptized. I re- 
member also that the first Protestant mission- 
ary to China, Robert Morrison, had to labor 
twenty-seven years to win three converts, who, 
because they were in his employ, were stigma- 
tized by the other Chinese as "rice Christians." I 
An Altar j^d no t mentioned the possibility of an altar 
service to the missionaries, because such a service 
had not occurred to me before I began the ser- 
mon. But despite all my fears, the impression 
of conviction in the audience became so strong 
that I timidly ventured in closing to give the 
invitation to the altar. I limited this, however, 
to those who were Christians, but who might 
desire the larger and fuller experience of Pente- 
cost, which I had been portraying. To my sur- 
prise, I confess, and great delight, about thirty 
men came to the altar. My faith increased, 
and I then suggested that any persons who were 
not church members, but who were willing to 



Divine Method of Securing Results 135 

break with idolatry might also come to the altar 
with us. Here again, to my surprise, I must 
confess, for my faith was weak, some twenty-five 
more rose and came to the altar. Immediately it 
occurred to me that the people were accepting 
my invitation out of politeness. The Chinese are 
a very polite people, and I conceived that possibly 
they might now be following my wishes out 
of their great desire to please me. Consequently 
I expressed my great appreciation of their polite- Deeper Than 
ness and their willingness to do whatever I 
asked them; but added that those only must 
come to the altar who had a genuine convic- 
tion of sin or a desire for the Holy Spirit, that 
coming to the altar on the invitation to break 
with idolatry would lead some who were now 
kneeling to persecution by their families and their 
clans, and that no one must remain at the altar 
who was not willing to break absolutely with all 
idolatry at any cost and that therefore all who 
were at the altar out of politeness and were not 
church members had better rise quietly and re- 
sume their seats. I expected a considerable num- 
ber to return to their seats at this invitation. 
To my surprise, not one arose and returned, but 
while we were singing a stanza, several more 
came to the altar. It became clear that the work 
was of the Holy Spirit, and I ceased interfering 
and let the people follow their convictions. I 



136 God's Missionary Plan 

noticed, in the meantime, that no women had 
come to the altar, and that some of them were 
weeping and many of them were looking with 
intense interest toward their husbands and sons 
who were going to the altar. I told them I un- 
derstood that they had not come to the altar be- 
cause it was not customary in China for men and 
women to kneel side by side, but they might 
kneel where they were. Suffice it to say that 
before the close of the service between two and 
three hundred men and women were earnestly 
calling upon God either for the baptism of the 
Holy Spirit or for the forgiveness of their sins. 
It was a memorable altar service and a marvelous 
victory of the Holy Spirit, 
widespread As the service was closing, I was again as- 
sailed with inward doubts. The tempter said to 
me: This is simply a special movement, vouch- 
safed to you by the Holy Spirit, to encourage 
your coming to China, but you must not expect 
any such experience as this in other places. In- 
deed, it seemed reasonable that I should expect 
a fuller preparation for the acceptance of the 
Gospel and of the baptism of the Spirit at our 
oldest mission than in other places. But at the 
close of the service I was somewhat surprised 
and delighted to find the missionaries undisturbed 
by the special proceedings and indeed remarking 
that the large number coming to the altar was 



Divine Method of Securing Results 137 

only an illustration of what those engaged in 
evangelistic work had been witnessing to a 
greater or less extent all through the Conference 
during the year. In a word, I then learned for 
the first time that a general spirit of conviction 
and a readiness to accept the Gospel existed in 
China to an extent unprecedented in our mis- 
sionary history. 

I was encouraged by this service to give the R es P° nseat 
invitation in other places throughout the empire, invitation 
In churches, in private houses, in halls, and upon 
the streets, and even in temple areas, I have asked 
the people repeatedly for an immediate decision 
to break entirely with idolatry and ancestor wor- 
ship and accept Christ. In response to one hun- 
dred and thirty or forty invitations given I have 
never seen a service in which at least some one 
did not immediately decide to become a Christian, 
the number varying from two or three up to as 
high as two hundred. 

A STUDENT COMING TO CHRIST 

The dav following the memorable altar service, Pur P° se of 

& the First Com- 

we left Foochow for Ngucheng to hold the Foo- mandment 
chow Conference. On returning from Hinghua, 
some four weeks later, it was necessary to re- 
main five or six days in Foochow in order to 
secure a boat to Shanghai. At the invitation of 
the Chinese pastors and the missionaries, we held 



138 God's Missionary Plan 

special services during these four or five days. 
At the close of a Sunday night service quite 
similar in character to the one described above, 
and in which some fifty or more had come to the 
altar, I went back to my room thoroughly ex- 
hausted physically and mentally, but full of 
spiritual encouragement. A half hour later there 
came a tap at the door, and inquiry was made 
upon the part of one of the missionaries if I could 
yet meet a Chinese student who seemed to be 
under deep conviction of sin. On the missionary 
and student entering, the latter said to me very 
The con- earnestly : "I want you to change the conditions 
2J^ of beginning the Christian life." I asked him in 
what respect he desired the change. He replied : 
"In regard to forbidding joining with one's par- 
ents in worshiping ancestors." He added im- 
mediately : "You put conditions upon us students 
in China which you never exacted of your stu- 
dents at home. You make it much harder for 
us to become Christians than for young people 
in America to become Christians. I want you to 
modify the conditions so as to make them equal 
in the two countries." I replied : "I do not make 
the conditions of salvation; simply have been 
announcing the conditions which are found in 
the Bible; and the first command in the Bible 
forbids the worship of any other gods." I real- 
ized more fully on that night and on a hundred 



Divine Method of Securing Results 139 

subsequent occasions the significance of that first 
command. The Chinese, like the Jews on enter- 
ing the promised land, are very willing to add 
the service of the true God to their ancestor wor- 
ship and their idol worship and thus increase 
in their minds their chances of salvation. But 
their ancestor worship is degrading, and it is 
simply impossible to permit seekers in China, as 
it was impossible in the earlier days to permit 
the Jews, to combine idolatry with the worship 
of the true God. 

This young man told me that his own mother Safet y in 

. . . Obeying 

had forsaken him in childhood, and that he had conscience 
not the slightest knowledge of her; that his 
present mother had taken him w T hen he was 
ready to perish and had nourished him and 
brought him up ; that she was a woman of some 
property and standing in the community ; that she 
would be subjected to severe persecution if she 
became a Christian; that he had sent her word 
the preceding winter that he could not join in the 
idol processions at home, and that she had then 
sent him word not to come home until he could 
unite in the idol worship because she knew that 
his refusal would bring persecution upon them 
as a family. He added, with apparently the 
strongest conviction of the truthfulness of his 
statement: "My mother will commit suicide if I 
become 2 Christian and refuse to join her in the 



Experiments 



140 God's Missionary Plan 

ancestral worship. Do you demand of me that 
I drive my mother to suicide?" I asked him if 
there had not been periods in his past life when 
he had obeyed his conscience, and if there were 
not times when he had disobeyed it. He was 
entirely familiar with such experiences and an- 
swered promptly in the affirmative. I asked him 
Results of what had been the results of his experiments : if, 
when he had disobeyed his conscience, he did not 
always find reason afterward to regret it; and 
if, on the other hand, when obedience seemed 
exceedingly hard, he had not learned afterward 
that this was the safer course. Here again his 
experience agreed with the experience of 
mankind that obedience is always wise. I said: 
"Your judgment has been enlightened since com- 
ing to the college at Foochow. You have come 
in contact with Western civilization. You have 
learned to read the Bible; and your own con- 
science tells you that you ought to worship the 
true God and forsake idolatry." Here again he 
admitted that he had been under such conviction 
since my visit to Foochow a month before that 
he had lost much sleep and had been sorely 
troubled. I added : "This voice of conscience is 
the voice of the Holy Spirit in your soul, and as 
you have found in the past that obedience is bet- 
ter, so now in this crisis, obedience is your only 
safe course." But added he: "Will you force 



Divine Method of Securing Results 141 

me to drive my mother to suicide? I am sure 
that in her humiliation and shame and the dis- 
tress which will come upon our family, she will 
take her own life." Larger experience in China 
has enabled me to realize much more fully than 
I did that night the real danger of suicide. I 
said to him : "Does not your mother at home do 
much of the work in the garden and the drudgery 
about the house, while you sit and wait for pupils 
to teach ?" He replied that such drudgery was a New stand- 
woman's work in China, and that it would create 
much excitement and prevent him securing any 
students if he presumed to relieve his mother of 
this drudgery. I replied: "Such conduct is not 
even decent Confucianism, not to mention Chris- 
tianity. Even your own writings teach a rever- 
ence for parents and tell of the efforts upon the 
part of sons to relieve them of their burdens." 
I added that Christianity enjoins even a higher 
love of parents than Confucianism, and said: 
"If on reaching your home, you show your 
mother your love for her by relieving her of this 
drudgery, she will be so astonished at the first 
that she will not commit suicide, at least until 
she sees what you are going to do ; and when 
she learns of the kindness and thoughtfulness 
and self-sacrifice which Christianity produces in 
your heart, she will never be driven by it to 
suicide." I assured him this was the final tempta- 



142 



God's Missionary Plan 



tion of satan to keep him from yielding his 
heart to Christ, and that he must venture in this 
matter upon faith just as he must accept his own 
salvation by faith. The argument lasted untU 
nearly midnight. At last he said: "My heart is 
so heavy and my conviction so deep that I must 
have relief and I will trust your statements and 
the promises of the Bible and surrender." He 
knelt with the missionary and myself and made a 
heart-broken prayer for himself, followed by 
prayers on our part, and soon the light came to 
his heart. Do you not think that young people in 
China have as deep a conviction of sin and recog- 
nize as fully the break which it is necessary for 
them to make with the world as young people 
in America ? The mother did not kill herself. 



A " Gospel" 

for 

Heathenism 



PREACHING IN A HEATHEN TEMPLE 

One winter day, after we had been in China 
some four or five months, we were traveling in 
Szechuen on our way to Suiling, two thousand 
miles west of Shanghai. In the evening we 
reached a city of some forty thousand inhabi- 
tants. When traveling, the missionaries stop not 
only with the missionaries of their own church, 
but with other Protestant missionaries when 
they cannot reach their own. If no missionaries 
are to be found, they frequently stop at their own 
or neighboring churches. But as there were 



Inn 



Divine Method of Securing Results 143 

neither missionaries nor churches in that city, we 
went to the Chinese inn. We were shown to 
an inner room next to the household, because 
foreigners are always given one of the safest 
rooms in the house. Unfortunately the pig is 
usually kept at night also in the safest part of the 
house that he may not be stolen. The pig is 
therefore usually in a pen by the side of your ? he Chinese 
room, or if your room happens to have a board 
floor, under the floor. In this case the floor was 
of clay, and as damp as many cellars in America. 
Not one house in a thousand has window glass, 
and this room had the customary opening cov- 
ered with thin rice paper. The room was dirty 
and damp and cold and full of foul smells. The 
Chinese k'ang, or bed, is built of bricks, about 
the height of a lounge. It is covered with 
straw, and the straw and bricks are usually 
full of vermin. We spread our oil cloths care- 
fully over the k'angs, set up our camp cots on 
top of the oil cloths, and made our beds on 
them. This work was soon ended, and while 
waiting for supper, which our Chinese cook was 
preparing, I went out and walked along the 
streets in order to get warm. We were in the 
latitude of New Orleans, and although the day 
was chilly, multitudes of Chinese people were out 
of doors. The street soon ran into a temple area, 
and we saw several hundred men there whose 



144 God's Missionary Plan 

attention was immediately directed to our pres- 
ence. I returned to the inn and asked Brother 
Johanson, who was conducting Mrs. Bashford 
and myself to the West China Conference, to 
bring his mandolin and we would hold a service. 
It is possible to secure a crowd and start a service 
almost anywhere in China within five minutes. 
We returned to the temple area and Mr. Johan- 
son began to play the mandolin and sing that 
little hymn, 

"Jesus loves me, this I know, 
For the Bible tells me so." 

We soon had a crowd of from five hundred to a 
wmmnga thousand, and Brother Johanson soon had them 

Strange Crowd 7 J 

attempting to sing the chorus. After the hymn 
I said to them that I would gladly explain 
the cause which brought us so many thou- 
sand li, 1 but that we were in the temple area and 
this Bible, the book which we had brought, con- 
tained a revelation that there was only one God, 
and condemned idol worship, and that I might 
be offending their idols by speaking in the temple 
area; and that as I was their guest, I must not 
give them or their idols needless offense. I 
paused for their consent. An appeal to the polite- 
ness of the Chinese never fails to secure a 
response, and they promptly bade me go on and 
speak freely my message. I then preached for 

1 About a third of a mile. 



Divine Method of Securing Results 145 

nearly half an hour on the text, "God so loved 
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth on him should not perish 
but have eternal life." It is easy in China to 
convince the people of future punishment. The 
Chinese are not foolish enough to believe that 
a man can escape in the next world the conse- 
quences of his conduct in this world. Their own 
books teach in substance that whatsoever a man 
soweth that shall he also reap. They believe in a 
God who punishes. But when I told them of a Too Good to 
God who loves men and who had sent his own 
Son to redeem them ; when I told them that men 
had put this Son to death and that he had risen 
again from the dead; that he had ascended to 
heaven and that he had given his followers a 
commission to disciple all nations, and that we 
had a revelation from this God in our book ; that 
this Jesus had appeared in Asia, and not in 
America; that he belonged to them as much as 
he belonged to us, that they were by creation 
God's children ; and that God desired us all to find 
salvation through Jesus Christ, the story seemed 
literally too good to be true. Indeed, that word 
"Gospel," or "good news," has taken on an 
entirely new meaning since I have been in China. 

At the close of the sermon, I asked them how Ready to 
many had ever heard the Gospel before. Not a teacher & 
man raised his hand or made any response. 



146 GocTs Missionary Plan 

"Surely you have heard some missionary tell this 
story before," I said; but they replied that they 
had never heard it before. They added that they 
The New had heard about a Western religion, but that they 

andBook ^ad never listened to the story of it before this 

day. We showed them the Bible, but they said 
that they never had seen the book, and were 
anxious to have a copy left among them. I said 
to them : "I am not sure that I can find a person 
to come and teach you this religion. But if I 
can find a teacher, we could not teach the reli- 
gion here in your temple, and you would need to 
find a hall or building where the religion could 
be taught." They thought they could rent a 
building. I added further that the first com- 
mandment in our Bible forbids idol worship; 
that our Bible declares the name of idols or 
other gods to be emptiness or nothingness; that 
there were no other gods and that they must give 
up idol worship if they wished to become Chris- 
tians. I then appealed to them to know how 
many of them, from such knowledge as they now 
had of their idols on the one side and of this 
religion, desired to become Christians and would 
come to the new teacher for instruction, if I 
could find a teacher for them. I suppose two 
hundred and fifty of them promptly raised their 
hands. At the close of the service forty or fifty 
of them gathered around to assure me that they 



Divine Method of Securing Results 147 

could find a home for the teacher and a hall in 
which he could teach them, and that they would 
help support him if I would send a man to teach 
this new religion to them. Surely the set time 
of favor in China has come. 

You who read the story will think that the T , he I ieldin * 

J of a Firm and 

Chinese are simply children, ready to hear and conservative 
adopt any new doctrine. Upon the contrary, Pe °P le 
they are the most firm and conservative people 
upon the face of the earth. Had our early mis- 
sionaries seen any such manifestations of readi- 
ness upon the part of the Chinese to accept the 
Gospel, they would have thought the golden age 
of Christ to be at hand. 

A LECTURE ON AMERICAN EDUCATION 

While I was in Peking in 1905 attending an ^ fore 
interdenominational conference called to secure Government 
the agreement of missionaries upon certain trans- 
lations of the Bible and hymns and upon other 
methods of Christian cooperation, I was invited 
to speak on "American Education" before the 
Chinese government teachers of Tientsin, the 
commercial metropolis of North China. The 
Commissioner of Education for the Chihli Prov- 
ince had kindly consented to preside upon the 
occasion; Dr. Hsi, President of the Imperial 
College of Physicians and Surgeons, a Chinese 
government school, also sat upon the platform 



Teachers 



148 God's Missionary Plan 

as a presiding officer. The audience was com- 
posed of native teachers in the government 
schools and the upper classmen from the College 
of Physicians and Surgeons. It was a non- 
Christian audience, and the lecture was upon a 
secular subject. 
General and j fi rs j. g ave an explanation of our American 

Industrial . . 

Education common school system which apparently inter- 
ested them greatly. Next I discussed the ques- 
tion as to whether China should aim at an 
industrial or military education, pointing out the 
fact that Russia spends three cents per inhabitant 
for education and $2.04 per inhabitant for mili- 
tary purposes, and yet she was being worsted by 
Japan. On the contrary, I hoped that the exam- 
ple of Japan might not lead China to enter upon 
a military career. I pointed out the fact that 
China had abandoned feudalism, which is the 
military organization of society, two hundred 
years before Christ; that Europe had abandoned 
the feudal organization of society four or five 
hundred years ago ; and that Japan had not aban- 
doned feudalism until 1868; and appealed to the 
Chinese not to go back to the military system, 
which she had abandoned two thousand years 
before. I thought that the great competition of 
the twentieth century would be, not in war, but 
along the lines of commerce and industry, and 
that if China, like the United States, laid great 



Divine Method of Securing Results 149 

emphasis upon education and maintained a small 
standing army, she might be prepared to con- 
tend even with the United States for the indus- 
trial supremacy of the Pacific Basin in the twen- 
tieth century. I watched the audience closely 
and found those whom I judged to be the leaders 
nodding their heads as sentence after sentence 
was translated to them. Presently they began to 
nod their heads as I uttered each sentence, before 
the translation came, and I knew that I had the 
audience with me down to this point. 

In the third place, I took up the question of ^^ 
moral and spiritual training, and told them that Training 
the real problem in Western nations was the clos- 
ing of the chasm between our knowledge of what 
is right and our conduct, between our ideals and 
our daily lives. I told them frankly that the 
Western peoples had not succeeded in closing 
this chasm, that this was the great reproach upon 
our existing civilization. I told them with equal 
frankness that from observation in at least half 
the provinces of their empire, they had failed 
more fully than Western nations to close the 
chasm between their own ideals and their daily 
conduct, pointing them to the corruption of offi- 
cial life and the degradation of the daily life of 
the Chinese. I told them, in conclusion, that 
there was a body of people in Western nations 
who had more nearly closed that chasm than 



150 God's Missionary Plan 

any other people whom I had known, although 
they were far from being perfect ; that these peo- 
ple were called Christians, and that Jesus Christ 
seemed to me to be the only Being who could 
enable us to close this chasm ; that so far as Con- 
fucius and Buddha helped them toward the real- 
ization of their ideals in daily life, they were 
to follow their teaching ; but that neither of these 
had any power to put life into their souls, and 
thus enable them to lead new lives ; that only as 
they experienced the new birth through Jesus 
Christ and realized the indwelling of the Holy 
Spirit would they have power to lead this new 
life ; that Jesus Christ gives light and life to the 
moral universe just as the sun gives light and 
life to the physical universe; and their civiliza- 
tion must be permeated by his presence, if it was 
to stand the strain of the twentieth century. 
Threefold While the leaders stopped nodding their heads, 
for an when my remarks on Jesus were interpreted to 
Empire them, yet they listened with great intensity. I 
closed the address somewhat anxious to know 
what effect I had produced and yet firm in the 
conviction that I had not transgressed the proper 
bounds of my subject; that I was to express to 
them my convictions as to what type of education 
would lift up and transform their empire, and 
that I had kept within bounds in presenting gen- 
eral education of the masses, industrial rather 



Divine Method of Securing Results 151 

than military education of the empire, and Chris- 
tian education as the conditions essential to the 
transformation of Chinese civilization. 

After I sat down the Commissioner of Educa- £ h !" ls L the 

Only xiope 

tion arose and thanked me with the customary of china 
Chinese politeness and assured the audience that 
a great statesman had come from the West and 
had spoken words of wisdom w^hich he hoped 
they would treasure in their hearts and embody 
in their lives. Chinese politeness prompts strong 
praise. Dr. Hsi then arose and followed with the 
usual Chinese compliments, but used the word 
religious teacher instead of statesman, and sur- 
prised me by calling particular attention to the 
third division of my subject and saying that it 
was by far the most important division. He 
then added the sentence: "Jesus Christ is the 
only hope of China." 

I was astonished by Dr. Hsi's statement, a Heathen 
coming from a heathen leader; and at the close confession 
of the service after the polite formalities of the ° fFaith 
farewell with the Chinese Commission of Educa- 
tion were finished, I turned to Dr. Hsi and asked 
him what led him to say that Jesus Christ is the 
only hope of China. He answered : "Because it 
is true." I replied: "Certainly, but where did 
you learn this doctrine?" He said that he had 
learned it from Dr. McKenzie. He saw my de- 
sire for further conversation and asked me to 



152 God's Missionary Plan 

dine with him the next day. Accordingly Mrs. 
Foster, of Washington, Mrs. Bashford, and my- 
self were the guests the next afternoon of Dr. 
and Mrs. Hsi, and we talked over the matter of 
the Christian faith for more than an hour. He 
How it told me that he had discovered in Dr. McKenzie 

a power of self-control, of love manifesting itself 
in service, such as he had not found in himself or 
in the other Chinese, and he had asked Dr. Mc- 
Kenzie the secret of it. Dr. McKenzie had told 
him that it was due to Jesus Christ enthroned in 
his heart. Dr. Hsi said that he himself had sought 
and found this Jesus. I then said: "Why have 
you not made an open profession of religion and 
united with the church?" He replied that the 
church was not willing to receive him while he 
worshiped Confucius, and that as President of 
the College he was obliged to go through this 
form of worship with his pupils. He said that 
the pupils all knew that he was a Christian and 
that all his friends in the community knew that 
he attached no importance whatever to this Con- 
fucian worship; that the question which con- 
fronted him was the resignation of his position 
in order to join the church or the holding of his 
position so long as he was permitted openly to 
bear testimony in favor of Jesus Christ, and that 
he was a member of the Young Men's Christian 
Association. I left him to the guidance of the 



Divine Method of Securing Results 153 

Holy Spirit, urging him to follow the Spirit's 
directions upon this as upon all subjects arising 
for decision. I am sure that the time will soon 
come in China, as it has already come in Japan, 
when officeholders will not be compelled to join 
in heathen worship and when some at least of the 
official classes in China will become open Chris- 
tians. In the meantime such men as Dr. Hsi 
are undermining the very foundations of heathen- 
ism, and are laying the foundations for the new 
Christianity even among the upper classes in the 
Chinese empire. The Western world is some- 
times amazed by what seems to be a sudden 
and impulsive turning to Christ in China. But 
we must remember that a hundred years of Prot- 
estant missionary teaching and living has not 
gone for naught, that the foundations of heathen- 
ism are undermined, and that in many cases, the 
foundations of the new religion are being firmly 
laid even though they are still underneath the 
surface and are not seen by the world at large. 

We beg our readers not to permit this long The consum- 
narration of personal experiences to lead them Early**' 
to a false conclusion. I am not justified even struggles 
in claiming the title of a missionary. Nor can 
China claim to be the only or the chief arena 
of the victories of the cross. India has made 
a far greater record for increase of membership 
in the Methodist Church during the last twenty 



154 God's Missionary Plan 

years than has China. The incidents narrated 
above can be more than matched by Bishops 
Thoburn, Warne, Oldham, and Robinson. In 
the Philippines, under Dr. Stuntz and other 
faithful missionaries, there has been a more 
marked turning to Christ and to Western civil- 
ization because of the break of the people with 
Korean j-]^ Roman Catholic authorities. Our church in 
Korea made the greatest record of increase in 
membership in 1906 of any field in Methodism. 
The great mission fields of other churches pre- 
sent records of evangelization and of the build- 
ing up of self-propagating churches not simply 
in process of development, but as nearing suc- 
cessful completion. When we see the deep con- 
viction of sin which often attends the preaching 
of the gospel in pagan lands, the appeal which 
the gospel makes to individuals as in the case of 
the Chinese student, its invasion of the very cita- 
del of paganism as in the temple service, and 
the turning of the leaders to Christ as in the 
case of Dr. Hsi, we are constrained to cry 
out in gratitude and wonder. "What hath God 
wrought !" 



CHAPTER IX 
The Divine Providence and Missions 
The presence of God in missionary effort is Experience of 
demonstrated by the scientific test of experiment, witnessing 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote in sub- to Christ 
stance : If one finds millions of human beings in 
an increasing number bearing testimony, during 
a period of eighteen centuries, to the peace and 
power and light which Christ has brought to 
their lives; if he hears not one dissenting testi- 
mony from a sincere follower of Christ ; if, upon 
the contrary, he hears those who once followed 
Christ and then deserted him, later bearing testi- 
mony that their deepest peace and their greatest 
moral power were experienced during their 
union with him, what can he conclude save that 
Christianity finds its vindication in the deepest 
experience of the race? Here is the vindication 
by the scientific test of experiment. As, despite 
the spots which scientists may discover thereon, 
the sun is the light and life of the physical uni- 
verse, so despite the discovery of any possible 
flaws in the Bible record, Jesus Christ remains 
the light and life of the moral universe. The 
high original aim of Ritschlianism in Germany 
was to demonstrate the validity of Christianity 

i55 



156 God's Missionary Plan 

without reference to criticism. Despite all histor- 
ical, literary, or even philosophical objections 
against the Christian faith, Ritschl maintained that 
Christ so bears witness to himself in the hearts 
of those who accept him and to the world 
through the transformed lives of those who fol- 
low him as to supplant the higher rationalism 
by the highest rationalism. John Wesley did for 
modern Christendom in part what Bacon did for 
modern science. As Bacon called the scientists 
from abstract speculation to experiment as the 
test of scientific truth, so Wesley called the 
Christian world from theological speculation to 
Christian experience. His doctrine of the wit- 
ness of the spirit in the heart of every true be- 
liever has done much to transform modern 
Christendom. Wesley's doctrine of Christian 
experience exactly matches Bacon's doctrine of 
scientific experiment. The Christian Church is 
moving from the theological basis to the basis 
of experience. 
Satisfaction But if we judge Christianity by the satisfac- 
tion it brings to the higher nature of those who 
follow Christ, is not the high degree in which 
missionaries enjoy this satisfaction at least strik- 
ing? There is peace in all cases of earnest 
whole-hearted devotion. But where consecrated 
souls follow a serious misinterpretation of the 
Bible their disillusion sooner or later is inevitable. 



of 
Missionaries 



Divine Providence and Missions 157 

If missionary work were due to fanaticism, the 
enchantment would have disappeared in a gen- 
eration, just as has happened with the delusion of 
Dowieism. But the inward peace and the trans- 
forming power attending mission work has con- 
tinued for centuries and indeed from the days 
of Christ. It is a constant marvel at home that 
those whose hearts have once become engrossed 
in missionary labor are uniformly eager to re- 
turn to their fields. If Ritschlianism is correct 
in its aim to found the Christian Church on 
Christian experience, however incorrect its dis- 
regard of history and philosophy; if the Wes- 
leyan movement was of God; if the whole ten- 
dency of the modern church is to fall back more 
and more from doctrinal standards upon Christian 
experience ; if the early church, with its pentecos- 
tal experiences, testifies to the peace and power 
which Christ brings to the souls of his followers, 
then we must concede that God has vouchsafed 
to the missionaries more fully than to any other 
body of Christian workers this scientific test of 
experience as the divine vindication of their obe- 
dience to the laws of the universe. 

2. But the scientific test of Christian experi- social and 

, - . s-~ , National 

ence is more than subjective. Christianity demon- Transforma- 
strates to the world its divine power by the trans- tions 
formation of the lives of those who follow Jesus 
Christ ; and this transformation in the eyes of the 



158 God's Missionary Plan 

world is more and more complete and marvelous 
just in proportion to the obedience with which 
the professing Christian follows the laws of the 
universe. Imperfectly as the church thus far 
has followed Jesus, nevertheless she has never 
been without a vindication in history of her di- 
vine power to transform the lives as well as the 
Earlier hearts of men. The slow but gradual trans- 

Changes in . .... 

Europe and formation of European civilization through the 
America Christian faith, and the passage of the Mississippi 
Valley and indeed of the American continent 
from barbarism to civilization at a single leap, 
without intervening generations of semiciviliza- 
tion, furnish external proofs of the presence and 
power of Christ in the world today as convincing 
to all thoughtful minds as the miracle of the 
loaves and fishes or the stilling of the waves 
upon the sea. But if we find proofs that we are 
working in accordance with the laws of the uni- 
verse and are supported by the divine power in 
the gradual transformation of the civilization of 
the home lands, we find still more marked proofs 
of the same in the more rapid transformation of 
heathen lands under missionary influences. 
Polygamy, foot-binding, the opium traffic, witch- 
craft, and superstition have been steadily op- 
posed by missionaries in foreign lands and are 
beginning to disappear from the face of the earth. 
Modern education has been introduced into most, 



Divine Providence and Missions 159 

if not all heathen lands by the missionaries. This 
is specifically true of Japan, China, Siam, India, 
Turkey, and Africa. The Methodist Episcopal 
Church introduced the first modern hospital, the 
first theological school, the first type of the pub- 
lic school, and the first college for Western 
learning into West China, while the Canadian 
Methodists introduced the first printing presses. A ^ encies of 

. - . Enlighten- 

Nmety per cent of our members m that province men t 
are adult men, and through missionary effort 
ninety per cent of these men can read and write 
as compared with ten per cent of their neighbors. 
The Commercial Press at Shanghai, which is 
earning ten per cent on the capital of $500,000, 
and is unable to supply text-books of Western 
science sufficient to meet the demand, was or- 
ganized by half a dozen young men, trained by 
that veteran missionary, Dr. Allen of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church, South. The primary, in- 
termediate, and normal schools of India and 
Ceylon started by the missionaries have so met 
the approbation of the government as to receive 
annual grants of aid. Robert College, Constanti- 
nople, is teaching a dozen different nationalities 
of young men the Western civilization. The 
students in attendance at our mission school at 
Singapore are substituting the English language 
for thirty-seven Asiatic dialects. Throughout 
the Pacific Islands, India, Turkey, Bulgaria, 



160 God's Missionary Plan 

Siam, Japan, and China the Bible has been trans- 
lated into the vernacular, and modern literatures 
are springing up in these lands through mission- 
ary effort. Robert College at Constantinople, the 
Protestant Syrian College at Beirut, the Chris- 
tian College on the Euphrates, the Peking Uni- 
versity, Saint John's College at Shanghai and 
the Christian colleges of India are transforming 
the civilizations of the lands in which they are 
located. Maclay, Verbeck, and Harris in Japan ; 
Moffatt and Livingstone in Africa; Butler and 
Thoburn in India; Griffith John, David Hill, 
William Ashmore, Dr. Martin, H. H. Lowry, 
Arthur Smith, and Dr. Allen in China, are trans- 
forming the civilization of empires. Here, then, 
is the scientific test not simply of inward experi- 
ences but of outward transformations wrought 
by the power of God. 
Testimony of Listen to the testimony of impartial observers 

Observers . ■* ... 

in regard to the achievements of missionaries. 
Darwin, who ranks with Newton, Bacon, and 
Copernicus, writes : "I took leave of the mission- 
aries with feelings of great respect for their 
useful and upright characters. The march of 
improvement consequent upon the introduction 
of Christianity throughout the South Sea prob- 
ably stands by itself in the records of history." 
Professor Silliman, of Yale University, says: 
"It would be impossible for the historian of the 



Divine Providence and Missions 161 

islands of the Pacific to ignore the important con- 
tributions of the American missionaries to 
science/' Hon. Charles Denby writes : "He who 
teaches Christianity teaches modern civilization." 
Phillips Brooks wrote from India: "Tell your 
friends who do not believe in foreign missions 
that three weeks' study of foreign mission work 
in India would convert them wholly." William 
Jennings Bryan wrote: "I do not apologize for 
mentioning from time to time the institutions 
which altruistic Americans have scattered over our Altruistic 

i ^n • t r 1 * 1 Service in the 

the Orient. If we cannot boast that the sun orient 
never sets on American territory, we can find 
satisfaction in the fact that the sun never sets 
upon American philanthropy. If the boom of 
our cannon does not follow the orb of day in his 
daily round, the grateful thanks of those who 
have been the beneficiaries of American gener- 
osity form a chorus that encircles the globe." 
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote : "I had conceived 
a great prejudice against missions in the South 
Seas, and I had no sooner come there than that 
prejudice was at first reduced, and then at last 
annihilated. Those who deblatterate against 
missions have only one thing to do — go and 
see them on the spot." Marquis Ito bears testi- 
mony: "Japan's progress and development are 
largely due to the influence of missionaries ex- 
erted in right directions when Japan was first 



1 62 God's Missionary Plan 

studying the outer world." Chulalongkorn, the 
King of Siam, reports : "The American mission- 
aries have done more to advance the welfare of 
my country and people than any other foreign 
influence." One of the Chinese High Commis- 
sioners to foreign lands spoke in high praise of 
the unselfish spirit of the missionaries and of the 
great service they are rendering China. The 
Geographer Meiniche wrote : "It is scarcely pos- 
sible to deny the extraordinary importance of the 
missionary efforts of our time. They are only 
in their infancy; yet it is certain that they will 
wholly transform the natures and relations of the 
non-Christian peoples and produce one of the 
most magnificent and colossal revolutions that 
human history records." 

3. The presence of God in missions grows 
History as more impressive when we lift our eyes from the 
a whole even t s occurring immediately around us to a sur- 
vey of history as a whole. Professor R. T. 
Stevenson has furnished in a brief, packed 
volume on The Missionary Interpretation of 
History a truer key to history than are Buckle's 
ponderous volumes on the history of European 
civilization because the divine providence is a 
vastly more potent force in shaping the history 
of nations and of ages than the external environ- 
ments of men. 
summary L e j- me summarize the divine sweep of world- 



Missions a 

Key to 



Divine Providence and Missions 163 

evangelization seen in the unfolding history of 
the centuries. 

(1) It took a thousand years to evangelize — The First 
not to Christianize — but simply to give the good Ye a" s sar 
news of the Gospel to fifty million souls. More- 
over, these one thousand years were the begin- 
ning of the dispensation of the Spirit inaugurated 

at Pentecost, the period in which the style of 
preaching was set by Peter whose sermon 
brought three thousand to repentance, whose 
type of evangelism was set by Paul who invaded 
all Europe with his faith; above all this first 
period was inaugurated by Christ in that life and 
death through which he reorganized society and 
redated history. This thousand years so glori- 
ously inaugurated witnessed the evangelization 
of fifty million people. Surely the power of God 
was manifest in the history of the church. 

(2) Earthly empires lose their glory in a The Next Five 
thousand years; but Christ was simply coming Y " a ° s re< 
into possession of his powers during the first mil- 
lennium. The evangelization of fifty millions of 

souls in a thousand years was a triumph of grace ; 
but he accomplished as much in the next five 
hundred years as he had accomplished in the pre- 
ceding one thousand years ; and at the Reforma- 
tion there were one hundred million people who 
had heard the glad tidings of the Gospel. Thus 
Christ accomplished as much in the evangeliza- 



164 God's Missionary Plan 

tion of the world during the third five hundred 
years of the existence of his church upon earth 
as during the first two periods of five hundred 
years each. While earthly kingdoms waned, the 
heavenly kingdom was growing in strength from 
century to century, from millennium to millen- 
nium. 
The (3) Surely fifteen hundred years exhaust the 

subsequent vitality of earthly empires. Neither Greece, nor 
enures R° me > nor Babylon, nor Assyria, nor France, nor 
Spain, nor England, nor the United States has 
lasted for fifteen hundred years. Only one civil- 
ization, and that the Chinese, has existed so long. 
But the kingdom founded by Jesus Christ did 
not lose its power during the first millennium and 
a half of its existence. During the next three 
hundred years, Christ accomplished as much for 
the evangelization of the human race as during 
the preceding fifteen hundred years. One hun- 
dred millions had heard the Gospel at the be- 
ginning of the sixteenth century; two hundred 
millions had heard the Gospel at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century. I do not think there 
was any violation of law in this strange mani- 
festation of unearthly power in the kingdom of 
Jesus Christ. There has been simply the mani- 
festation in accordance with the laws of the uni- 
verse of a higher than earthly power. But surely 
not any man who looks facts in the face can fail 



Divine Providence and Missions 165 

to recognize that Jesus Christ has made good his 
pledge to use the divine resources for the en- 
largement of the kingdom : "Lo, I am with you 
always, even unto the end of the world." 

(4) It is not common to regard the last cen- The 

* . , , , Nineteenth 

tury as a century of miracles, unless we speak century 
of the miracles of science. But in the same sense 
in which the last century witnessed miracles of 
science, it has also witnessed miracles of grace. 
In neither case was law violated ; in neither case 
were we treated to prodigies : in both cases there 
was marvelous advance. Astounding as the claim 
sounds, it is literally true that the work of evan- 
gelizing the human race made more progress dur- 
ing the last one hundred years than during the 
preceding eighteen hundred years. While there 
were two hundred million people on earth in 
1800 who had heard the glad tidings of the Gos- 
pel, at least five hundred millions on earth today 
know that "God so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
on him should not perish, but have eternal 
life." Judged by human history God is interested 
in this work, and God is accomplishing his pur- 
pose. You and I may grow discouraged if we 
will; we may lie down under our burdens if we 
will; we may abandon the task as hopeless if 
we will; we may denounce the missionaries as 
fanatics if we will ; or we may be honest enough 



1 66 God's Missionary Plan 

and fair enough to go back of the missionaries 
and treat Christianity as an iridescent dream, and 
the Golden Rule as sky-parlor politics. But 
whatever you or I do or fail to do, Jesus Christ 
will carry forward this task of the evangeliza- 
tion of the race. Surely in view of what has 
been accomplished in the last nineteen hundred 
years, we may anticipate that a thousand million 
people will be evangelized at the close of the 
present century. 

Rat**? * "^ n v * ew °^ ^ e i ncreas i n & rate °f modern 
christian Christian progress, the evangelization of the race 
progress j n foe present generation is within the range of 
possibilities. In China, Morrison needed twenty- 
seven years to win his first three converts to 
Christ. Our own church needed ten years to 
persuade the first native of China to be baptized. 
Upon the other hand, during the last year the 
lives of a thousand people were surely being 
transformed in our Methodist colleges alone, 
two thousand more in our boarding schools, five 
thousand more in our day schools; while forty 
thousand inquirers came to our churches, and 
one hundred and sixty thousand came to our hos- 
pitals for help in body and soul. And yet our 
church was doing only one fifth of the work ac- 
complished by Protestant Christianity in China 
last year. The early missionaries in China would 
have looked upon any such results as miracles. 



Divine Providence and Missions 167 

India records equal, if not greater, miracles of 
grace. In the Philippines and in Korea we are 
witnessing races born in a day. Africa is strid- 
ing into view by the triumphs of the cross. South 
America is summoning us to give light and life 
to her struggling millions, and to lay the founda- 
tions of Christian education and civilization for 
the hundred millions who are soon to occupy that 
continent. 

Modern inventions reduce the cost of printing Power of 
the Bible, so that a single gift of four million In ventions 
dollars will enable the American Bible Society and wealth 
to produce fifty million copies of the Chinese 
Bible. With the aid of missionaries and native 
Christians, these fifty million copies could be 
distributed throughout the empire at the cost 
of a million dollars more. It is thus within the 
power of our church alone, or even of some 
wealthy Christian man, to evangelize all China 
within the next fifteen or twenty years more fully 
than Europe was evangelized at the time of the 
Reformation. Some business man may enter into 
partnership with God and become the providen- 
tial agent for bringing to the knowledge of him 
a larger number of people than did Cyrus through 
ruling the Persian kingdom. 

One other fact must be borne in mind, namely, Secular seed 
that God works in all history, and that so-called S p^uai 
secular seed often bears spiritual fruit. Greece Fruit 



i68 God's Missionary Plan 

though conquered yet transformed the civiliza- 
tion of Macedon by means of the Greek language 
which Alexander adopted, and the literature, 
philosophy, and civilization which that language 
carried with it. Rome when conquered neverthe- 
less transformed the civilization of her Frank 
and Teutonic conquerors in the same manner. Is 
it not significant, therefore, that not simply mis- 
sionary schools and private schools, but govern- 
ment schools in India, Japan, China, Africa, and 
parts of South America are teaching the English 
language ? Christ has not limited his progress to 
the achievements of the little band of mission- 
aries now working in these empires. The 
crude attempts of young foreigners who have 
picked up a little English at our mission schools 
to teach their fellows our English tongue are so 
full of mistakes as to make laughter almost ir- 
resistible. But our laughter should be mingled 
with the song of triumph, for the wings of 
our English speech will carry our Protestant 
Christianity to the ends of the earth, as Greek 
and Roman civilizations were carried to western 
Asia and northern Europe on the wings of the 
Greek and the Latin languages. 
The sweep j n dosing let us lift our eyes once more to the 

of God's f . . . r 1 i • 1 «• 1 1 

Kingdom divine sweep of the kingdom of heaven on earth 
and and to the unfailing promise of God. "My word 

Promise f . 

shall not return unto me void, but shall accom- 



Divine Providence and Missions 169 

plish that whereunto I sent it" Read Nettleton's 
free translation of Ephesians 3. 8: "By revela- 
tion the [eternal] secret was made known to me, 
which in other generations was not made known 
to the sons of men, that the heathen are heirs and 
participators and shareholders of the promise in 
Christ Jesus through the Gospel; of which I 
became a minister by the free gift of God, . . . 
to me the very least of all the holy this gift was The Immeas - 

J « . 11, f 1 urable Wealth 

entrusted — to proclaim to the heathen the good f Christ 
news of the immeasurable wealth of Christ and 
to throw light upon what is the administration of 
the mystery which was hidden for ages with God 
the creator of all things." Read again that divine 
promise from the fifth to seventh verses of the 
ninth chapter of Isaiah; the first half of which 
has been fulfilled: "For unto us a child is born, 
unto us a son is given ; and the government shall 
be upon his shoulder: and he shall be called 
Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting 
Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of 
his government and of peace there shall be no 
end upon the throne of David. The zeal [not of 
man but] of Jehovah of hosts shall perform 
this." Read once more in view of the accom- 
plishments of the past century the promise of the 
Master and it will hearten you for the completion 
of the task ; notice in reading how the command 
is preceded by the assurance of the Master's 



170 God's Missionary Plan 

power and followed by the Master's promise to 
be with us unto the end of the ages : "All author- 
ity hath been given unto me in heaven and on 
earth ; Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all 
the nations, baptizing them into the name of the 
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, 
even unto the end of the world/' 



INDEX 



Abraham, promise to, 21, 48 

Africa, missionary work, 5, 
16, 19, 70, 93, 106; re- 
sults, 167; the Congo, 15 

African dialects, 9; slave 
trade, 15 

Agnosticism, 39 

Allen, Dr., of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South, 
159, 160 

Altar service in Foochow, 
an, 134-136 

America, Christianization 
of, 2 9 ; need of foreigners 
in, 31 

American Bible Society, 36, 
167 

Americanization of the 
world, the, 68 

Ancestor worship, 138; one 
instance, 139 

Asbury's methods and re- 
sults, 100 

Ashmore, William, 160 

Asmonean movement, the, 
61 

Assyria, 164 

Atheism, 39 

Atlantic Basin, no 

Atonement involving mis- 
sions, 44 

Babylon, 164 

Bacon, Francis, and John 

Wesley, 156 
Bashford, Mrs., 152 



Battle of the ages, the, 16 
Beirut, college at, 160 
Best-trained men, the, 10 1 
Bible, copies of, 167; trans- 
lation, 99; wealth's won- 
derful opportunity to cir- 
culate, 167; work of the 
societies, 36 
Bishops, our missionary, 

154 

Board, of Foreign Missions, 
the, 32 ; of Home Missions 
and Church Extension, 32 

Bowne, books of Professor, 

„ 35 

British Foreign Bible So- 
ciety, 36 

Brooks, Phillips, quoted, 
85, 161 

Bryan, William Jennings, 
quoted, 161 

Buddha, 150 

Buddhists, 77 

Building in foreign lands, 

33> 34 
Bulgaria, 159 
Burt, Bishop, 34 
Butler, William, 160 

Call, how to learn of the di- 
vine, 10 1 ; of distant 
lands, no 

Canaanites, the, 24 

Centurion's faith, the, 65 

Chihli Province, 147 

China, Chinese empire, 2; 
7i 



172 



Index 



annual missionary con- 
tribution for, 6 ; as a mis- 
sion field, 5, 93, 105; en- 
couragement in , 153; 
evangelistic results in, 
133-154; illustrating mis- 
sionary problems, 2-16; 
in transition, 68; Jesuits 
in, 10; long period of 
civilization, 164; mis- 
sionary force, 3, 4, 99; 
opium evil, 13; popu- 
lation, 2 ; sermons in, 133- 
137, 144-146; three es- 
sentials for, 150 

Chinese, civilization, 164; 
converts, 134, 137; ex- 
clusion, 12, 13; language, 
8; politeness, 135, 144, 
151; solidarity, 7, 15; 
translation of Bible and 
hymn book, 35 

Chosen people, the, 23, 27 

Christ, conflict with satan, 
16; devotion to the Jew- 
ish race, 24; leading the 
missionary enterprise, 18, 
64-67; maker of all 
worlds, 58; meaning of 
his kingship, 67; power 
shown in the miracles of, 
83; progress of his king- 
dom, 162-169; replacing 
self, 29; supreme in mis- 
sionary purpose, 64-68 

Christendom, evangeliza- 
tion of, 5; expenditures 
of, religious and charit- 
able, 6; periods of devel- 
opment, 162-166 

Christian, colleges, India 
and Turkey, 160; com- 
monwealth, the, 40; 
traders in heathen lands, 



13,16; workers in Europe 
and America, 3, 4 

Christianity, divine power 
of, 157; problem in, 77 

Christianization, of Europe 
and America, 3-8, 19, 28, 
29; of the world, 1, 19, 29, 
89. See also Missions 

Church Extension Society, 
the, ^^ 

Civil power and mission- 
aries, 10, 11 

Cleansing and renewal of 
the soul, 77 

Coleridge, S. T., quoted, 155 

Collections, comparison of, 
38; educational, 36, 37 

Commissioner of education, 

r, * 47 ' I51 

Common sense as a guide, 

103 
Comparison of home and 

foreign fields, 2-7 
Confucius, 39; Confucian- 

ists, 77 
Congo atrocities, 15 
Conscientious use of money, 

126 
Converts, as givers, ^ I Chi- 
nese, 134, 137 
Conviction of sin, 133-135, 

138 
Cooperating with God, 112 
Copernicus, 160 
Cornelius, conversion of, 

60 
Creation account, bearing 

on missions, 47 

Darwin quoted, 160 

Democracy, the trend to- 
ward, 68 

Denby, Hon Charles, quot- 
ed, 10 



Index 



173 



Denominational loyalty, 26, 

2 7 . . 

Difficulties, see Missions, 
difficulties 

Disillusion follows misin- 
terpretation, 156 

Dispensation of the Spirit, 
the, 78-88 

Dispensations, the three, 

.73-89 . . 

Divine, commission, 71; 

promise, 72 

Dowieism, delusion of, 157 

Duties, divine, 41 

Education, modern, in 
heathen lands, 158 

Election, Arminian view, 
22; Calvinistic tendency, 
2 2 ; doctrine of, 22,27; 
to divine duties, 41 

Electricity, the age of, 81 

English, authority in India, 
15; language, 168 

Europe, as a mission field, 
93, 104; Christian work 
for, 2-8 

Evangelists in China, duties 
of, 100 

E vangelization , 1 - 1 9 , 71, 
72; periods, 162-165; 
possibilities, 166-170 

Evils disappearing, 158 

Example, the stage of, 77 

Exclusion Act, the Amer- 
ican, 12, 16 

Expenditures, comparative, 
6 

Failures in business, pro- 
portion of, 125 
Faith, secret of, 41 
False humility, 102 
Family ties, 25 



Famine in Shansi, 86 

Fields white for the har- 
vest, 109 

Financial knowledge essen- 
tial, 123 

Finney, a type, 84 

Fletcher, a type, 84 

Foochow, altar services in, 
134, i37» J 3 8 ; preaching 
in, 133; foot-binding, 158 

Foreign work, one collec- 
tion for many countries 
and needs, 32 ; relation of 
home work to, 21-42 

Foreigners in America, 31 

Foster, Mrs., 152 

France, 164; missionary op- 
portunity in, 34, 104 

Funds, how to secure, 112; 
large increase needed, 113 

Generosity inculcated, 130 

Gentile apostle, no, 24, 27 

Gentiles, Peter's admission 
of the, 60 

Giving, as a Christian duty, 
1 1 2-13 2; impulsive, 125; 
in mission fields, 33; rec- 
ompense certain, 40 

Gladstone, Mr., 69 

God, as a partner, 112 ; def- 
inition of, 45 ; missionary 
plan of, 1-20; present in 
missionary effort, 155; 
purposes of, 129 ; the true 
end of creation, 39-42 

Gospel, a new meaning, 
145; agencies at home 
and in China compared, 
3-7 

Gravitation, the law of, 81 

Greece, illustration from, 
168 

Guy on, Madame, 84 



174 



Index 



Habakkuk's song, 52 
Haeckel, 39 

Hague tribunal, the, 69 
Harris, Bishop M. C, 

160 
Heathen, pagan, or unevan- 

gelized peoples, number 

of, 2, 19 
Hebrews, book of, 57 
Higher critical ideas, 24 
Hill, David, work of, in 

China, 86, 160 
Holy Spirit, work of the, 

79-89 
Home and foreign duties, 

22; needs of home and 

foreign missions, 27, 28, 

3° 

Home Conferences, pressure 
in the, 107-109 

Home missions, basis for, 
22-28; immense total of 
gifts for, 32; large in- 
crease needed, 113, 114 

Hospitals, 3 7 ; the first mod- 
ern, in West China, 159 

Hsi, remark of Dr., 151; 
strong Christian testi- 
mony, 152 

Human nature, Lessing's 
study of, 75 

Hung Sui-tseuen, 13 

Ideal of Jesus, the, 67 
Idolatry, to be forsaken, 

i35» i37, 146 
Idols, meaning of the term, 

India, English authority in, 
1 5 ; languages of, 9 ; Meth- 
odism in, compared with 
China, 153; missionary 
work in, 5, 16, 19, 70, 
105, 106 



Individualism, 39, 90 

Inherited wealth, unfavor- 
able effects of, 40 

Isaiah, preparation of, 10 1; 
words of, 50, 51 

" Islands of the sea," mis- 
sionary work in, 5, 16, 19 

Ito, Marquis, quoted, 161 

Japan, Jesuits in, 10; mis- 
sionary work in, 19, 49; 
needs of, 104 

Jeremiah's cry, 51 

Jesus, see Christ 

Jews, an example, the, 131 ; 
error of the, 41 ; Pharisaic 
tendency of, 52, 54; priv- 
ilege of, 23-27; purpose 
of their call, 56, 61 

John, Griffith, 160 

John the apostle's change of 
view, 63, 66 

John the Baptist, 6^, 66 

Jonah, book of, 54, 57 

Judaism, the expansion of, 

55 
Justification by faith, 61, 62 

Korea, people of, 105, 154, 
167; record of increased 
membership, 154 

Lambeth Conference, the, 
69 

Language problem, in Af- 
rica, 9; in China, 8, 9; in 
India, 9 

Languages, Greek and Lat- 
in, 168 

Latent talent, 103 

Leadership, opportunity 
for, 99 

Lessing's study of human 
nature, 75 



Index 



175 



Liquor traffic, an obstacle, 

Livingstone, David, 160 
London Quarterly Review, 

3° 
Lord's Prayer, the, 64 
Love, the law of, 39 
Lowry, H. H., 160 
Luther, achievements, 85; 

preparation, 10 1 

Mabie, Henry C, 44 

Maclay, R. S., 160 

Malachi's prophecy, 52 

Malaysia, 106 

Margin, the key to fortune, 
the, 127 

Martin, Dr. W. A. P., 160 

Materialism, 39 

McKenzie, Dr., 151, 152 

Mediterranean Basin, no 

Meiniche quoted, 162 

Melchizedek, 59 

Methodism, in China and 
India, 153; in the Philip- 
pines, 153; in Korea, 154 

Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society (Board), 
6; total annual contribu- 
tions, 6 

Micah's prophecy, 51 

Millionaire, a poor, 128 

Ministers in China, 3; in 
the United States, 3; 
ranked equally with mis- 
sionaries, 28 

Ministry an overcrowded 
profession, 109 

Miracles, 54, 55, 60; of 
science and of grace, 165 

Missionaries, as creators, 99, 
100; attractiveness, 94; 
call of, 92 ; character first, 



10 1 ; common sense, 95; 
companionableness, 94; 
faith and optimism, 95; 
gifts of leadership, 95; 
health a requisite, 93; 
influence, 99, 100; in 
China, 4, 99; leadership, 
99; partners with Christ, 
100; passion for service, 
97 ; personal qualities, 94; 
preparation, 10 1; retain- 
ing certain privileges, 25 ; 
scholarship, 94; soldier 
spirit, 96 ; sympathies, 94 

Missionary, collections and 
uses for, 31, 32, 36; inter- 
pretation of history, 69, 
162; problem, 69; spirit, 
104 

Missionary Society of the 
M. E. Church (Parent 
Board), 6; division of, 
32. See also Board, etc. 

Mission, Bible supply, 35; 
buildings, 33; churches, 
^^; countries, 35; edu- 
cational work, 36, 37; 
hospitals, 37; literature, 
34, 35; parsonages, 33; 
pastoral support, 37 

Missions, climate affecting, 
93 ; commission of Christ, 
18, 20, 66, 70; conse- 
quent on his spirit, life, 
and death, 64-68; diffi- 
culties, 2, 8-16, 96; di- 
viding one appropriation 
among many interests, 
33-37; divine plan of 
campaign, 1-20; encour- 
agements, 97-100; goal 
of revelation, 43, 56-70; 
God's summons to, 17, 
18; Methodist, in twenty- 



176 Index 

six countries, 32; not a transformed into a mis- 
quixotic scheme, 17; re- sionary, 42, 52, 61-63, 70, 
sources for, 18; results, 92, 101 
133-154; self-support, 32, Payson, Edward, 84 
33; warrant for, 43. See Peace in devotion, 156, 157 
also Christianization, Peking, a lecture in, 147; 
Evangelization. University, 160 
Mississippi Valley, no, 158 Personal blessings, the doc- 
Moffat, Robert, 160 trine of, 25, 27 
Montecorvino, John of, 10 Peter's missionary message, 
Morrison, Robert, 134 59 
Moses, preparation of, 10 1 Pharisees, basis for, 23; too 

narrow view of, 57-67 

Natural and supernatural, Philippines, conditions in, 

81 106, 154, 167 

Neighbor, obligation to our, Philosophy of history il- 

39 luminated by missions, 

Nevius in China, 86 62, 68, 69, 162-169 

New Testament and mis- Physicians, missionary, 4 

sions, 24, 25, 58-70 Pilate's question, 67 

Newton, Isaac, 160 Polygamy, 158 

Nicodemus, 66 Poor millionaire, a, 128 

Population, Africa, 9; Chi- 

Obedience to law essential, nese empire, 2; Europe 

88 and America, 2; India, 9; 

Oldham, Bishop, 154 United States, 3 

Old Testament and mis- Poverty in heathen lands, 

sions, 21-24, 43-57 33 

Openings, providential, 102, Power, method of securing, 

104 73-89; Pentecostal, 80 

Opium, traffic being over- Precept, the stage of, 77 

come, 158; war, n, 15 Presbyterian Church, a mis- 
Opportunities in the for- sionary society, 69, 70 
eign field, 109 Press, the, in missions, 159, 

165 

Pacific Basin, civilization " Priests unto God," 91 

passing to, no; Islands, Principle, the stage of, 77 

work in, 159 Problems, missionary, 2, 5; 

Pantheism, 39 Christianity's, 77 

Parables of our Lord, 64 Prodigal, the parable of the, 

Parents, an appeal to, in 55, 56 

Parliament of religions, a, Prophets, missionary pas- 

47 sages from, 50-52 

Paul, source of power, 85; Protestant, Church, 61; 



Index 



177 



faith, 7; Syrian College, 
160 

Providential purpose of 
world evangelization, 70, 
155-170 

Psalms, missionary concep- 
tions in, 49 

Rahab, 59 
Reformation, the, 7 
Religion, of the Old Testa- 
ment, 47; rightly cen- 
tered, 41, 42 
Responsibilities to be ac- 
cepted, 102 
Richards, in China, 86 
Ritschlianism, original aim 

of, 155, 157 
Robert College, 159, 160 
Robertson, Frederick, 21 
Robinson, Bishop, 154 
Roman Catholic, faith, 8; 
methods a hindrance, 10 
Rome, 164, 168 
Roosevelt, President, 13 
Russia, in transition, 68; 

outlook in, 104 
Ruth, book of, 53, 57 

Sabbath and Christianity, 
116 

Saint John's College, Shang- 
hai, 160 

Salvation Army, the, 33 

Sanctification, essence of, 
88 

Saul the Pharisee, 63 

Schools and colleges, 37, 
159, 160 

Secular pursuits, 113; spirit- 
ual fruit of, 167 

Selfishness sure of defeat, 
40 

Self one of three factors, 39 



Self-propagation, 99 

Self-support, 32, 99 

Sermon on the Mount, 78 

Shanghai, commercial press 
at, 159 

Siam, 159, 160; the king of, 
quoted, 162 

Silliman, Professor, quoted, 
160, 161 

Singapore students, 159 

Slave trade, effects of, 15 

Smith, Arthur H., 160 

Socialism, 39 

Soul, cleansing and renewal 
of the, 77 

South America, as a mis- 
sion field, 93, 111; its 
nations awakening, 105; 
representative govern- 
ment in, 168; schools in, 
167, 168 

South Sea, Christianity 
throughout, 160 

Spain, 164 

Speer, Robert E., 91 

Spirit, the indwelling and 
dispensation of the, 77, 

78 
Statistics: Chinese written 
characters, 8; Christian- 
ity, annual expenditures 
for, 6; colleges and uni- 
versities, gifts to, in 1906, 
37; foreign missionary 
workers in China, 99; 
foreign missions, gifts to, 
38; Methodist Episcopal 
Church, annual gifts, 29; 
ministers in the United 
States, 3; population of 
Chinese empire, United 
States, etc., see Popula- 
tion; unevangelized peo- 
ples, 19 



178 



Index 



Stead, Mr., 68 

Stevenson, Professor R. T., 

69, 162 
Stevenson, Robert L., quot- 
ed, 161 
Stuntz, Dr., 154 
"Submerged tenth, the," 121 
Summary of progress, 163 
Systematic giving, 114 
Szechuen Province, a jour- 
ney and incidents in, 142 

Taiping Rebellion, the, 13 
Teachers, missionary, 3, 4 
Theocratic nation, the Jews, 

the, 65 
Thoburn, Bishop, 1 54, 

160 
Thomas a Kempis, 84 
Thomas the apostle, 85 
Tithing, objections to, 120; 

advantages in, 122 
Tract Society and Sunday 

School Union, the, 34 
Trained men, 10 1 
Tribal divinities, 24, 48 
Turkey, 159 
Typical experiences, 84 

United States, Christian 
work in, 2-7, 107-109; 
ministers in, 3; popula- 
tion, 3 



Universal redemption, God's 
provision for, 57 

Verbeck, G. F., 160 

Wanamaker, John, expe- 
rience of, 38 

Warne, Bishop, 154 

Warrant for missions, the 
divine, 43 

Water chemically defined, 

45 

Watkinson, Dr., 30 

Wesley, John, 70; expe- 
rience and teaching, 8^; 
preparation, 10 1 ; view of 
11 enthusiasts,' ' 103 

Woman's Foreign Mission- 
ary Society, 6 

Women missionaries, 3, 4 

Workers, in the home field, 
3, 4, 7, 107, 109; in the 
foreign field, method of 
securing, 90-1 11 

World conquests for mis- 
sionaries, 70 

Young Men's Christian 

Association, 152 
Young people and mission 

service, 100-104 

Zechariah's song, 52 



MAR 4 1907 



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